Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/119

 "As a woman should know a man before she gives him her heart," she explained quietly. "I have seen you here only as our guest and—" "Isn't that your own fault?" he broke in. "You have not tried to know me."

"No," she admitted, "I have not tried to know you—in that way."

"But you will," he said eagerly, "and love will come. Once away from here, together, in a new life, with wide interests, I will make you love me. I will work for you, slave for you, I will give you everything your heart can wish. I love you, Janet."

"I don't think you quite know what you are saying," she said gently. "Even if I wanted to go, if it were the dearest wish I had, I would be afraid to barter my love for the opportunity; it—it would not be a very sacred thing then, would it? But I have no wish to go away. My place is here. I have always been happy and contented here, and this is my life."

"Yes," said Merton, with sudden, impulsive bitterness—the calmness with which she spoke gave a finality to her words which maddened him. "Yes; and that is the trouble. It is your life and it has warped you. You are satisfied and contented with it because you cannot comprehend anything apart from that grey, grinning, hideous place. Your whole life, your thoughts, everything, are bound up with prison this and prison that. You won't marry me, because you say you don't know me. No!—you only know those striped-animals in there. So, at that rate, if you only marry whom you know, your love will have to find its object within those four walls, amongst—"