Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/295

Rh “Then tell me!—tell me yourself!”

Stamp went her foot. It was one of her favourite tricks. Directly she lost patience down it went.

“I’ll tell you, if you’ll give me time.” I tried to find the words, but couldn’t. I held out my arms instead. “It’s this.”

“What?”

“Don’t you understand?”

“What am I to understand?”

“Don’t you understand that I want you to be my wife?”

“Your wife! Your wife!” She spoke in a crescendo scale, as if I had insulted her. “You said you were my friend!”

“Don’t you understand that I want to be something more than your friend?”

“You want to beat me! to use me like a dog! to have me burned!”

“Susie!”

“My father said in England there were no wives.”

“No wives in England? He—he was making fun of you.”

“He was not making fun of me. He has told me all my life. When I asked him why they burned my mother, he said because she was his wife. He is an Englishman. In England they have no wives.”

I had a glimpse of the confusion which was in her mind. But at that moment I was incapable of straightening out the evil.

“Your—your father’s was a peculiar case. There are wives in England.”

“Is that true?”

She thrust her face close to mine. She was terrifically in earnest.

“It is perfectly true. They abound.”

“Then I will not go to England.”

“But—Susie!—you’ve got hold of the wrong end