She hesitated, and was on the point of refusing, when he took her by the upper part of her arm as if to hold her.  “Do,” he pleaded.  “I want to say something to you.”

“I have no time to stay,” she answered, shrinking from his touch.

“Yes, yes, time enough for all I have to say,” he returned.  “I beg you to come with me to-day, Leam—­I beg it; and I do not often ask a favor of you.”

There was something in his manner that seemed to compel Leam to consent in spite of herself.  True, he besought, but also he seemed almost to command; and if he did not command, then his earnestness was so strong that she was forced to yield to it.  Trembling, but with her proud little head held straight—­wondering what was coming, and vaguely conscious that whatever it was it would be pain—­Leam let him take her to the garden-seat where the budding lilacs spoke of springtime freshness and summer beauty.  Alick was trembling too, but from excitement, not from fear.  He had made up his mind now, and when he had once resolved he was not wavering.  He would ask her to share his life, accept his love, and he would thus take on himself half the burden of her sin.  This was how he felt it.  If he married her, knowing all that he knew, he would make himself the partner of her crime, because he would accept her past like her present—­like her future; and thus he would be equally guilty with her before God.  But he would trust to prayer and the Supreme Mercy to save her and him.  He would carry no merits of devotion as his own claim, but he would have freed her of half her guilt, and he would be content to bear his own portion of punishment for this unfathomable gain.  It was the man’s love, but also the soul’s passionate promise of sacrifice and redemption, that gave him boldness to plead, power to ask for a grace to which, had this deep stain of sin never tainted her, he would not have dared to aspire.  But, as it was, his love was her greater safety, and what he gained in earthly joy he would lose in spiritual peace, while her partial forgiveness would be bought by the loss of his security of salvation.  Not that she understood all this or ever should, but it gave him courage.

“When you first saw me, Leam, after my illness you said that you wanted me to live,” he began in a low voice, husky with emotion.  “Do you mean this?”

“Yes,” she said, looking straight before her.

“Live for you?” he asked.

“For us all,” she answered.

“No, not for us all—­for you,” he returned with insistence.

“That would be silly,” said Leam quietly.  “I am not the only person in the world:  you have your mother.”

“For my mother, perhaps; but for the world, nothing.  You are the world to me,” said Alick.  “Give me your love, and I care for nothing else.  Tell me you will be my wife, and I can live then—­live as nothing else can make me.  Leam, can you love me, dear?  I have loved you from the first moment I saw you.  Will you be my wife?”