"Cordelia," he repeated, even more softly, "will you marry me?"
She fell back from him, startled, amazed. It came as a bolt out of the blue.
It was the one thing she had not looked for, had not hoped for, had never thought to ask for.
"Marry you!" she repeated, as though the words were words she did not know. "Marry you!"
The molten silver of the river so far beneath her seemed to rise and fall and fade, and the purple line of the foot-hills wavered and darkened and went out. A new voice had come to her in the wilderness of her doubt, a new path seemed to lead out of the two-fold desert of her despair.
"Yes, dear," he said, quietly, taking her gloved hand in his, "will you marry me?--be my wife?"
No words came to her tongue, and her face was white; but the slowly awakening light that crept into her eyes and illuminated all her pallid face made a new, a transformed woman of her. A belated song-sparrow alit on one of the old guns near them, and sang thinly for a moment or two. Never had the man beside her seen that tender light which came to her that minute and hung over her like a halo.
She drew back from him for a moment again, still doubting, still perplexed, still hesitating. He held out his two arms for her as one does for a child.
"I love you, my darling; I love you!" she murmured, as he folded them about her. And he knew it was true. He bent over her, and she gave him her mouth to kiss, reluctantly, as though it had never been kissed before. He kissed her, not passionately, but gravely, almost reverentially; and she was happier at the thought that he had done it so.
"I used to half fear you, dear," he said, still holding her hand through his arm. "I thought you were cold. I looked on you only as the woman who wrote books, as one who worked for praise and fame and success, as a woman hardened and schooled by a selfish world. That suspicion of selfishness, I believe, made _me_ selfish. No, no; you must listen, dear, for this is a confession. What I took for coldness in you challenged a certain coldness in me, and for weeks and weeks I misunderstood you and misjudged you. Now I know better. What has happened during the last week has shown me how wrong I was. And now I want you to forgive me, if you can, for all those old misunderstandings. Will you, Cordelia, dear?"