"I said I offered you my name and all that goes with it. I would try to tell you what it is, only that I find something in our relative positions transcending words. But since you need words--since apparently you prefer plainness of speech--I'll tell you something: I saw Bienville this morning."
She looked up with a new expression, verging on that of curiosity.
"Since then," he continued, "I've become even more deeply conscious than I was before of the ineradicable nature of what I feel for you."
"I've come to see that, whatever may have happened, whatever you may be, I want you as my wife."
"Do you mean that you would overlook wrongdoing on my part, and--and--care for me, just the same?"
"I mean that life isn't a conceivable thing to me without you; I mean that no considerations in the world have any force as against my desire to get you. Whatever your life has been, I subscribe to it. Listen! When I saw Bienville this morning he withdrew what he said on shipboard--as nearly as possible, without giving himself the lie, he denied it--and yet, Diane, and yet I knew his first story was--the truth. No, don't shrink. Don't cry out. Let me go on. I swear to God that it makes no difference. I see the whole thing from another point of view. I'll not only take you as you are, but I want you as you are. I give you my honor, which is dearer than my life--I give you my child, who is more precious than my honor. Everything--everything is cheap, so long as I can win you. Don't shrink from me, Diane. Don't look at me like that--"
"How can I help shrinking from anything so base?"
Her voice rose scarcely above a whisper, but it checked the movement with which, after the minutes of almost motionless confrontation, he came toward her with eager arms.
"Yes--base. That a man should care for a woman whom he thinks to be bad is comprehensible; that he should wish to make her his wife is credible; that he should hope to lift her out of her condition is admirable; but that he should descend from his own high plane to stay on hers is despicably weak; while to drag down with him a girl in the very flower of her purity is a crime without a name."
The dark flush showed how quickly his haughty spirit responded to the flicker of the lash.