“Let me think,” he said quickly. “You’ve paid off your mortgage. How much was it?”
She told him, and he set down the figures rapidly.
“Who held your mortgage?” he wanted to know.
“Stephen Jarvis,” she said, with a singular reluctance at which she wondered, even while she perceived it.
“Miserly old crab; I remember him,” said David Whitcomb.
“Hurrah!” he cried. “I have it! With what you’ve got left and my little pile we’ve more than enough to buy you back. Don’t you see? Marry me, dear, and we’ll call the sale off, pay back the money, and——”
He stopped short at sight of her unresponsive face.
“What if you have?” he urged. “The contract can be quashed. You’ll give me the right to get you out of it, Barbara?”
She hesitated, her eyes averted from his anxious face.
“Do you mean that you don’t—that you can’t—? Barbara, do you prefer slavery—to me?”
“I mean,” she said slowly, “that I cannot—promise you anything until——”
“But don’t you see, dear, that it would be better, safer that way? As your husband—even as your promised husband—I could—Good Lord! what a preposterous situation! You must give me the right to get you out of it.”
“I did it voluntarily,” she said, “and I must fulfil my agreement.”
“Then you will go peacefully away with this person—man or woman—and stay five years, when the matter might easily be arranged by paying back the money, and by proving a prior claim. My claim is prior, Barbara. I loved you five years ago. I love you now. Give me the right to break this absurd bond. Won’t you, Barbara?”
His lips, his eyes, pleaded with his eloquent voice. He dropped to his knees beside her chair; his arm stole about her waist.
“Barbara!” he murmured, his face close to hers.
She broke from him with a little shuddering cry.
“Do you know—did you hear how my father—died?” she asked, in a frightened voice.
He sprang to his feet, his face crimson with shame and fury.
“I drank a glass of wine before I came here to-night—a single glass,” he said. “Is it that you mean?”
“If you had suffered what I suffered——” she began; then her voice broke. “I couldn’t help it, David; I—remembered.”
It was the first time she had called him by his name. He looked at her in silence for a minute.
“I understand,” he said gently. “I won’t offend again. I promise you.”