Not a little embarrassed, Laura was at a loss just what to say, and in the end remarked lamely enough:
“I am sure it is the right spirit—the best motto.”
“Miss Dearborn,” Jadwin began again suddenly, “why don’t you take a class down there. The little micks aren’t so dreadful when you get to know them.”
“I!” exclaimed Laura, rather blankly. She shook her head. “Oh, no, Mr. Jadwin. I should be only an encumbrance. Don’t misunderstand me. I approve of the work with all my heart, but I am not fitted—I feel no call. I should be so inapt that I know I should do no good. My training has been so different, you know,” she said, smiling. “I am an Episcopalian—‘of the straightest sect of the Pharisees.’ I should be teaching your little micks all about the meaning of candles, and ‘Eastings,’ and the absolution and remission of sins.”
“I wouldn’t care if you did,” he answered. “It’s the indirect influence I’m thinking of—the indirect influence that a beautiful, pure-hearted, noble-minded woman spreads around her wherever she goes. I know what it has done for me. And I know that not only my little micks, but every teacher and every superintendent in that school would be inspired, and stimulated, and born again so soon as ever you set foot in the building. Men need good women, Miss Dearborn. Men who are doing the work of the world. I believe in women as I believe in Christ. But I don’t believe they were made—any more than Christ was—to cultivate—beyond a certain point—their own souls, and refine their own minds, and live in a sort of warmed-over, dilettante, stained-glass world of seclusion and exclusion. No, sir, that won’t do for the United States and the men who are making them the greatest nation of the world. The men have got all the get-up-and-get they want, but they need the women to point them straight, and to show them how to lead that other kind of life that isn’t all grind. Since I’ve known you, Miss Dearborn, I’ve just begun to wake up to the fact that there is that other kind, but I can’t lead that life without you. There’s no kind of life that’s worth anything to me now that don’t include you. I don’t need to tell you that I want you to marry me. You know that by now, I guess, without any words from me. I love you, and I love you as a man, not as a boy, seriously and earnestly. I can give you no idea how seriously, how earnestly. I want you to be my wife. Laura, my dear girl, I know I could make you happy.”
“It isn’t,” answered Laura slowly, perceiving as he paused that he expected her to say something, “much a question of that.”
“What is it, then? I won’t make a scene. Don’t you love me? Don’t you think, my girl, you could ever love me?”
Laura hesitated a long moment. She had taken the rose from her shoulder, and plucking the petals one by one, put them delicately between her teeth. From the other end of the room came the clamorous exhortations of Monsieur Gerardy. Mrs. Cressler and the Gretry girl watched the progress of the rehearsal attentively from the doorway of the dining-room. Aunt Wess’ and Mr. Cressler were discussing psychic research and séances, on the sofa on the other side of the room. After a while Laura spoke.
“It isn’t that either,” she said, choosing her words carefully.
“What is it, then?”
“I don’t know—exactly. For one thing, I don’t think I want to be married, Mr. Jadwin—to anybody.”
“I would wait for you.”
“Or to be engaged.”
“But the day must come, sooner or later, when you must be both engaged and married. You must ask yourself sometime if you love the man who wishes to be your husband. Why not ask yourself now?”
“I do,” she answered. “I do ask myself. I have asked myself.”
“Well, what do you decide?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Don’t you think you would love me in time? Laura, I am sure you would. I would make you.”
“I don’t know. I suppose that is a stupid answer. But it is, if I am to be honest, and I am trying very hard to be honest—with you and with myself—the only one I have. I am happy just as I am. I like you and Mr. Cressler and Mr. Corthell—everybody. But, Mr. Jadwin”—she looked him full in the face, her dark eyes full of gravity—“with a woman it is so serious—to be married. More so than any man ever understood. And, oh, one must be so sure, so sure. And I am not sure now. I am not sure now. Even if I were sure of you, I could not say I was sure of myself. Now and then I tell myself, and even poor, dear Aunt Wess’, that I shall never love anybody, that I shall never marry. But I should be bitterly sorry if I thought that was true. It is one of the greatest happinesses to which I look forward, that some day I shall love someone with all my heart and soul, and shall be a true wife, and find my husband’s love for me the sweetest thing in my life. But I am sure that that day has not come yet.”
“And when it does come,” he urged, “may I be the first to know?”
She smiled a little gravely.
“Ah,” she answered, “I would not know myself that that day had come until I woke to the fact that I loved the man who had asked me to be his wife, and then it might be too late—for you.”
“But now, at least,” he persisted, “you love no one.”
“Now,” she repeated, “I love—no one.”
“And I may take such encouragement in that as I can?”
And then, suddenly, capriciously even,
