“No,” he corrected.  “My promise was that you should go back and announce your choice.  If some few months are to run, nothing hinders your choosing here and now.  I do not ask you to marry me before the term is out, but only to make up your mind.  You hear what I offer?”

She swept him a low, obedient bow.  “I do, and it is much to me, my dear lord.  Oh, believe me, it is very much! . . .  But I do not think I want to be your wife—­thus.”

“You could not love me?  Is that what you mean?”

“Not love you?” Her voice, sweet and low, choked on the words.  “Not love you?” she managed to repeat.  “You, who came to me as a god—­ to me, a poor tavern drudge—­who lifted me from the cart, the scourge; lifted me out of ignorance, out of shame?  Lord—­love—­doubt what you will of me—­but not that!”

“You do love me?  Then why—­” He paused, wondering.  The impalpable barrier hung like a mist about his wits.

“Did Andromeda not love Perseus, think you?” she asked lightly, recovering her smile, albeit her eyes were dewy.

“I am dull, then,” he confessed.  “I certainly do not understand.”

“You came to me as a god when you saved me.  Shall you come to me as less by an inch when you stoop to love me?”

“Ah!” he said, as if at length he comprehended; “I was drunk last night, and you must have time to get that image out of your mind.”

She shook her head slowly.  “You did not ask me last night to marry you.  I shall always, I think, be able to separate an unworthy image of you, and forget it.”

“Then you must mean that I am yet unworthy.”

“My dear lord,” she said after a moment or two, in which she seemed to consider how best to make it plain to him, “you asked me just now to marry you, but not because you knew me to be worthy; and though you may command what you choose, and I can deny you nothing, I would not willingly be your wife for a smaller reason.  Nor did you ask me in the strength of your will, your passion even, but in their weakness.  Am I not right?”

He was dumb.

“And is it thus,” she went on, “that the great ones love and beget noble children?”

“I see,” he said at length, and very slowly.  “It means that I must very humbly become your wooer.”

“It means that, if it be my honour ever to reward you, I would fain it were with the best of me. . . .  Send me away from Sabines, my lord, and be in no hurry to choose.  Your cousin—­what is her name?  Oh, I shall not be jealous!”

With a change of tone she led him to talk of the new home he had prepared for her—­at a farmstead under Wachusett.  He was sending thither two of his gentlest thoroughbreds, that she might learn to ride.

“Books, too, you shall have in plenty,” he promised.  “But there will be a dearth of tutors, I fear.  I could not, for example, very well ask Mr. Hichens to leave his cure of souls and dwell with two maiden ladies in the wilderness.”