hair wind-blown about her face; and because of her closeness to
him and of a fresher and more poignant realization of what she
meant to him, he trembled so that she was aware of it in the hand
that held hers.
She suddenly leaned against him, bowing her head until it rested
lightly upon his breast. And so they stood while another squall,
with flying leaves and scattered drops of rain, rattled past.
With equal suddenness she lifted her head and looked at him.
“Do you know,” she said, “I prayed last night about you. I
prayed that you would fail, that you would lose everything
everything.”
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Daylight stared his amazement at this cryptic utterance. “That
sure beats me. I always said I got out of my depth with women,
and you’ve got me out of my depth now. Why you want me to lose
everything, seeing as you like me–”
“I never said so.”
“You didn’t dast say you didn’t. So, as I was saying: liking me,
why you’d want me to go broke is clean beyond my simple
understanding. It’s right in line with that other puzzler of
yours, the more-you-like-me-the-less-you-want-to-marry-me one.
Well, you’ve just got to explain, that’s all.”
His arms went around her and held her closely, and this time she
did not resist. Her head was bowed, and he had not see her face,
yet he had a premonition that she was crying. He had learned the
virtue of silence, and he waited her will in the matter. Things
had come to such a pass that she was bound to tell him something
now. Of that he was confident.
“I am not romantic,” she began, again looking at him as he spoke.
“It might be better for me if I were. Then I could make a fool
of myself and be unhappy for the rest of my life. But my
abominable common sense prevents. And that doesn’t make me a bit
happier, either.”
“I’m still out of my depth and swimming feeble,” Daylight said,
after waiting vainly for her to go on. “You’ve got to show me,
and you ain’t shown me yet. Your common sense and praying that
I’d go broke is all up in the air to me. Little woman, I just
love you mighty hard, and I want you to marry me. That’s
straight and simple and right off the bat. Will you marry me?”
She shook her head slowly, and then, as she talked, seemed to
grow angry, sadly angry; and Daylight knew that this anger was
against him.
“Then let me explain, and just as straight and simply as you have
asked.” She paused, as if casting about for a beginning. “You
are honest and straightforward. Do you want me to be honest and
straightforward as a woman is not supposed to be?–to tell you
things that will hurt you?–to make confessions that ought to
shame me? to behave in what many men would think was an
unwomanly manner?”
The arm around her shoulder pressed encouragement, but he did not
speak.
“I would dearly like to marry you, but I am afraid. I am proud
and humble at the same time that a man like you should care for
me. But you have too much money. There’s where my abominable
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common sense steps in. Even if we did marry, you could never be
my man–my lover and my husband. You would be your money’s man.
I know I am a foolish woman, but I want my man for myself. You
would not be free for me. Your money possesses you, taking your
time, your thoughts, your energy, ever thing, bidding you go here
and go there, do this and do that. Don’t you see? Perhaps it’s
pure silliness, but I feel that I can love much, give much–give
all, and in return, though I don’t want all, I want much–and I
want much more than your money would permit you to give me.
“And your money destroys you; it makes you less and less nice. I
am not ashamed to say that I love you, because I shall never
marry you. And I loved you much when I did not know you at all,
when you first came down from Alaska and I first went into the
office. You were my hero. You were the Burning Daylight of the
gold-diggings, the daring traveler and miner. And you looked it.
I don’t see how any woman could have looked at you without loving
you–then. But you don’t look it now.
“Please, please, forgive me for hurting you. You wanted straight
talk, and I am giving it to you. All these last years you have
been living unnaturally. You, a man of the open, have been
cooping yourself up in the cities with all that that means. You
are not the same man at all, and your money is destroying you.
You are becoming something different, something not so healthy,
not so clean, not so nice. Your money and your way of life are
doing it. You know it. You haven’t the same body now that you
had then. You are putting on flesh, and it is not healthy flesh.
You are kind and genial with me, I know, but you are not kind and
genial to all the world as you were then. You have become harsh
and cruel. And I know. Remember, I have studied you six days a
week, month after month, year after year; and I know more about
the most insignificant parts of you than you know of all of me.
The cruelty is not only in your heart and thoughts, but it is
there in face. It has put its lines there. I have watched them
come and grow. Your money, and the life it compels you to lead
have done all this. You are being brutalized and degraded. And
this process can only go on and on until you are hopelessly
destroyed–”
He attempted to interrupt, but she stopped him, herself
breathless and her voice trembling.
“No, no; let me finish utterly. I have done nothing but think,
think, think, all these months, ever since you came riding with
me, and now that I have begun to speak I am going to speak all
that I have in me. I do love you, but I cannot marry you and
destroy love. You are growing into a thing that I must in the
end despise. You can’t help it. More than you can possibly love
me, do you love this business game. This business–and it’s all
perfectly useless, so far as you are concerned–claims all of
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195
you. I sometimes think it would be easier to share you equitably
with another woman than to share you with this business. I might
have half of you, at any rate. But this business would claim,
not half of you, but nine-tenths of you, or ninety-nine
hundredths.
“Remember, the meaning of marriage to me is not to get a man’s
money to spend. I want the man. You say you want ME. And
suppose I consented, but gave you only one-hundredth part of me.
Suppose there was something else in my life that took the other
ninety-nine parts, and, furthermore, that ruined my figure, that
put pouches under my eyes and crows-feet in the corners, that
made me unbeautiful to look upon and that made my spirit
unbeautiful. Would you be satisfied with that one-hundredth part
of me? Yet that is all you are offering me of yourself. Do you
wonder that I won’t marry you?–that I can’t?”
Daylight waited to see if she were quite done, and she went on
again.
“It isn’t that I am selfish. After all, love is giving, not
receiving. But I see so clearly that all my giving could not do
you any good. You are like a sick man. You don’t play business
like other men. You play it heart and and all of you. No matter
what you believed and intended a wife would be only a brief
diversion. There is that magnificent Bob, eating his head off in
the stable. You would buy me a beautiful mansion and leave me in
it to yawn my head off, or cry my eyes out because of my
helplessness and inability to save you. This disease of business
would be corroding you and marring you all the time. You play it
as you have played everything else, as in Alaska you played the
life of the trail. Nobody could be permitted to travel as fast
and as far as you, to work as hard or endure as much. You hold
back nothing; you put all you’ve got into whatever you are
doing.”
“Limit is the sky,” he grunted grim affirmation.
“But if you would only play the lover-husband that way–”
Her voice faltered and stopped, and a blush showed in her wet
cheeks as her eyes fell before his.