She still sat like an exquisite statue of meditation, looking out into the night, benumbed and breathless with the passion his words evoked. Suddenly she turned and vehemently exclaimed: "You ought not to ask me this. I'm not fit to be your wife."
"Let me be the judge of that."
"But you don't realize what I am. You must not think of me in that way. I can't let you. I am different from other women. You must not deceive yourself."
"I do not. I know, to my joy, that you are different from other girls; that is why I am here and asking you to be my wife. That is why I loved you that day on the mountain-side, because you were different."
"No, no!" she despairingly exclaimed. "You don't understand. I mean that I am surrounded by spirits, and they will make you ashamed of me. Think what your friends would say?"
"I am not responsible to my friends. I don't care what they say. They are not choosing my wife for me. I do know what you mean, and your protest increases my love for you. I am not concerned with your ghosts--only with your character."
"But I am a medium!" she went on, desperately. "I have this awful power. You're all wrong about mother and Mr. Clarke. They have nothing to do with what happens." Her beautiful hands were clinched and her face set in the resolution to force her confession upon him. Her bosom rose and fell piteously as she struggled for words, "You must not misunderstand me. I believe in the spirit-world. Sometimes I say I don't, but I do."
He spoke soothingly: "There is nothing wrong or disgraceful in your theory; it is your practice of trance, of mediumship, to which I object, and which I intend to prevent."
"I want you to do that. I hate my trances and those public circles. But will that put an end to the rappings and other things that go on around me when I am awake? That is the question."
This was the question, but he rode sturdily over it, resolute to subordinate it if not to trample it under foot.
"Not at all. The real question is very simple: can you trust yourself to me, fully, because you love me? If you do I will answer for the rest. I do not know why you meant so much to me that day. I do not know why, out of all the women I know, you move me most profoundly; but so it is and I am glad to have it so." He said this with a grave tenderness which moved her like a phrase from some great symphony, and as she raised her tear-stained, timid face to his she saw him as he seemed at that first meeting on the mountain-side, in the sunset glow, so manly, so frank, so full of power that he conquered her with a glance, and with that vision she knew her heart. Her eyes fell, her throat thickened, and her bosom throbbed with a strange yearning. She loved, but the way of confession was hard.