His look showed his agitation.

‘So we are to be saved—­by boys like Desmond—­and women like you?’

‘Oh, I am a cypher—­a nothing!’ There was a passionate humiliation in her voice.  ‘I should be nursing in France—­’

‘If it weren’t for your mother and your sister?’

She nodded.  There was a pause.  Then the Squire said, in a different tone,

’But you have not answered my question.  I should be obliged if you would answer it.  How am I, being I—­how is a man of my kind to fill his time—­and live his life?  If the country is in deadly peril—­if the ground is shaking beneath our feet—­if we are to go on fighting for years, with “our backs to the wall,” even I can’t go on cataloguing Greek vases.  I acknowledge that now.  So much I grant you.  But what else am I good for?’

The colour flushed in her fair skin, and her eyes filled again with tears.

‘Come and help!’ she said simply.  ’There is so much to do.  And for you—­a large landowner—­there is everything to do.’

His face darkened.

’Yes, if I had the courage for it.  But morally I am a weakling—­you know it.  Do you remember that I once said to you if Desmond fell, I should go with him—­or after him?’

She waited a moment before replying, and then said with energy, ‘That would be just desertion!—­he would tell you so.’

Their eyes met, and the passion in hers subdued him.  It was a strange dialogue, as though between two souls bared and stripped of everything but the realities of feeling.

’Would it be?  That might be argued.  But anyway I should have done it—­the very night Desmond died—­but for you!’

‘For me?’ she said, shading her eyes with a hand that trembled.  ’No, Mr. Mannering, you could not have done such a thing!—­for your honour’s sake—­for your children’s sake.’

’Neither would have restrained me.  I was held to life by one thread—­one hope only—­’

She was silent.

’—­the hope that if I was to put my whole life to school again—­to burn what I had adored, and adore what I had burned—­the one human being in the world who could teach me such a lesson—­who had begun to teach it me—­would stand by me—­would put her hand in mine—­and lead me.’

His voice broke down.  Elizabeth, shaken from head to foot, could only hide her face and wait.  Even the strength to protest—­’Not now!—­not yet!’ seemed to have gone from her.  He went on vehemently: 

’Oh, don’t imagine that I am making you an ordinary proposal—­or that I am going to repeat to you the things I said to you—­like a fool—­in Cross Wood.  Then I offered you a bargain—­and I see now that you despised me as a huckster!  You were to help my hobby; I was to help yours.  That was all I could find to say.  I didn’t know how to tell you that all the happiness of my life depended on your staying at Mannering.  I was unwilling to acknowledge it