"Well," he said, "we'll go on a little further. It seems better that I should make what's in my mind quite clear to you. You see, I and Captain Dampier start in a week."
Agatha was certainly conscious of a thrill of dismay, but the man proceeded quietly. "We may be back before the winter, but it's also quite likely that we may be ice-nipped before our work is through, and in that case it would be a year at least before we reach Vancouver. In fact, there's a certain probability that all of us may leave our bones up there. Now, there's a thing I must ask you. Is it only a passing trouble that stands between you and Gregory? Are you still fond of him?"
The girl felt her heart beating unpleasantly fast. It would have been a relief to assure herself that she was as fond of Gregory as she had been, but she could not do it.
"That," she said, "is a point on which I cannot answer you."
"We'll let it go at that. The fact that Gregory sent me over for you implied a certain obligation. How far events have cleared me of it I don't know--and you don't seem willing to tell me. But I fancy there is now less cause than there was for me to thrust my own wishes into the background, and, as I start in another week, the situation has forced my hand. I can't wait as I had meant to do, and it would be a vast relief to know that I had made your future safer than it is before I go. Will you marry me at the settlement the morning I start?"
Half-conscious, as she was, of the unselfishness which had prompted this suggestion, Agatha turned and faced him in hot anger.
"Can you suppose for a moment that I would agree to that?" she asked.
"Wait," said the man gravely. "Try to look at it quietly. First of all, I want you. You know that--though you have never shown me any tenderness, you can't doubt it--but I can't stay to win your liking. I must go away. Then, as things stand, your future is uncertain; and as my wife it would, at least, be safer. However badly the man I leave in charge of the Range may manage there would be something saved out of the wreck, and I would like to make that something yours. As I said, I may be away a year, perhaps eighteen months, and I may never come back. If I don't, the fact that you would bear my name could cause you no great trouble. It would lay no restraint on you in any way."