"I am asking you to marry me," he said, with equal steadiness.
"Really, do you mean? You are actually in earnest?" Her voice had
a sharp quiver in it. She was trembling suddenly. "Please be
quite plain with me!" she said. "Remember, I don't know you very
well. I have got to get used to the ways out here."
"I am quite in earnest," said Burke. "You know me better than you
knew the man you came out here to marry. And you will get used to
things more quickly married to me than any other way. At least you
will have an assured position. That ought to count with you."
"Of course it would! It does!" she said rather incoherently.
"But--you see--I've no one to help me--no one to advise me. I'm on
a road I don't know. And I'm so afraid of taking a wrong turning."
"Afraid!" he said. "You!"
She tried to laugh. "You think me a very bold person, don't you?
Or you wouldn't have suggested such a thing."
"I think you've got plenty of grit," he said, "but that wasn't what
made me suggest it." He paused a moment. "Perhaps it's hardly
worth while going on," he said then. "I seem to have gone too far
already. Please believe I meant well, that's all!"
"Oh, I know that!" she said.
And then, moved by a curious impulse, she did an extraordinary
thing. She leaned forward and laid her clasped hands on his knee.
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