Chapter XLVIII

It was the strangest question Oran Delaney had ever heard from a girl’s lips. He said to himself that Aline Rodney’s simplicity was simply matchless. If she had been reared within the walls of a convent she could not have seemed more ignorant of the offense she was committing against society, against the creed of the whole world, in asking a man to marry her, and thus usurping his masculine prerogative.

Breaking in upon his stupid silence, she continued:

“Only a marriage in name, you know, Mr. Delaney. I should not live with you, of course. Neither of us would care for that. If you gave me the shelter of your name at the altar I would go back then to my father’s house, and never trouble you again!”

“You do not know what you are saying!” he cried out, passionately. “Never trouble me again! Oh, my God!”

“Indeed I should not, Mr. Delaney!” she cried out, hastily, and quite mistaking the cause of his agitation. “I should never come here again. All that I wish is to satisfy papa and the world. The simple marriage ceremony would do that.”

“And you would be content with that, Aline?” he asked, gazing down into her splendid violet eyes with a look she could not understand.

“Quite content,” she answered, letting the long fringe of her lashes droop low before that anxious gaze.

“But I am a wealthy man, you know, Aline,” he said. “Should you not wish to have some of my income settled upon yourself?”

She raised her blue eyes fearlessly to his face.

“I think I have told you before that the wealth of the world could not make up to me for the trouble you have caused me,” she said, proudly.

“And you would refuse it even as my wife?” he asked.

“Yes,” Aline answered, steadily, and then there was a brief silence. The man turned his back upon her and walked to the furthest corner of the room. In that moment he was paltering with the most terrible temptation of his life. The angels of good and evil were fighting fiercely for his soul.

She waited in nervous impatience for him to return to her, and when he did after a few minutes, she spoke eagerly, without waiting for him to speak:

“Well, your answer, Mr. Delaney--is it yes or no?”

He parried the question by one that was cruel and cut deep:

“Miss Rodney, do you know that it is a bold and unmaidenly act for you to ask a man to marry you?”

The barbed shaft went home. The slight form quivered as if transfixed by an arrow, the blue eyes dilated and looked at him with an agony of reproach in their lustrous depths.

“Did you not know it?” he repeated, harshly, almost sternly, while he averted his eyes in cold disdain.

“I should have known it if--if only I had stopped to think,” she cried, and the great waves of crimson began to roll over her face on which he would not look. “I was so frightened for you that I put self aside. I thought only of saving you, and now”--she broke down suddenly, and finished the sentence through hard, dry sobs, “now you scorn and despise me!”

“Why were you frightened for me?” he asked, curiously.

“No matter--and yet God knows I would have saved you if I could--do not forget that, Mr. Delaney, since you will not marry me!” she cried, desperately.

“No, I will _not_ marry you!” he cried, with a furious bitterness that was quite inexplainable. “Oh, go, girl, go! Why do you stay here to torture me thus?”

“I am going,” she answered, with a proud bitterness, as she tore the door open and rushed from the room. She ran along the hall, down the stairway, flew through the hall and the kitchen, pausing not until she found herself again out in the dark, starless night, with the soft, swift flakes of snow still falling steadily, and wrapping old Mother Earth in a pure white winding sheet.

“I shall never go home again--never!” said the girl, lifting a white, desperate face in the wintery darkness. “May God pity and guide me in my wretched exile!”