“You must let me point out that some amount of discussion is needed.  If we didn’t have it before marriage, we should have it afterward, when it would be worse.  You won’t think I’m boasting if I say that I think my vision is a little keener than yours, and that I see what you’d be doing more clearly than you do yourself.  You know me—­or you think you know me—­as a guilty woman, homeless, penniless, and without a friend in the world.  You don’t want to leave me to my fate, and there’s no way of helping me but one.  That way you’re prepared to take, cost what it will.  I admire you for it; I thank you for it; I know you would do it like a man.  But it’s just because you would do it like a man—­because you are doing it like a man—­that your kindness is far more cruel than scorn.  No woman, not the weakest, not the worst, among us, would consent to be taken as you’re offering to take me.  A man might bring himself to accept that kind of pity; but a woman—­never!  You said just now that you had come to offer me—­what you had to offer; but surely I’m not fallen so low as to have to take it.”

“I said I offered you my name and all that goes with it.  I would try to tell you what it is, only that I find something in our relative positions transcending words.  But since you need words—­since apparently you prefer plainness of speech—­I’ll tell you something:  I saw Bienville this morning.”

She looked up with a new expression, verging on that of curiosity.

“And—?”

“Since then,” he continued, “I’ve become even more deeply conscious than I was before of the ineradicable nature of what I feel for you.”

“Ah?”

“I’ve come to see that, whatever may have happened, whatever you may be, I want you as my wife.”

“Do you mean that you would overlook wrongdoing on my part, and—­and—­care for me, just the same?”

“I mean that life isn’t a conceivable thing to me without you; I mean that no considerations in the world have any force as against my desire to get you.  Whatever your life has been, I subscribe to it.  Listen!  When I saw Bienville this morning he withdrew what he said on shipboard—­as nearly as possible, without giving himself the lie, he denied it—­and yet, Diane, and yet I knew his first story was—­the truth.  No, don’t shrink.  Don’t cry out.  Let me go on.  I swear to God that it makes no difference.  I see the whole thing from another point of view.  I’ll not only take you as you are, but I want you as you are.  I give you my honor, which is dearer than my life—­I give you my child, who is more precious than my honor.  Everything—­everything is cheap, so long as I can win you.  Don’t shrink from me, Diane.  Don’t look at me like that—­”

“How can I help shrinking from anything so base?”

Her voice rose scarcely above a whisper, but it checked the movement with which, after the minutes of almost motionless confrontation, he came toward her with eager arms.