"Ragna!" his cry rang out in the stillness. She heard him sink to a chair, pushing it back as he did so with a grating noise on the tiled floor. Presently he rose and came to her side, she remained motionless; he drew her resisting hands down from her face. "Ragna, is this true?" She nodded, not daring to look at him. He knelt beside her. "Ragna, will you be my wife? Have I proved that I love you, now?" She gazed at him in amazement. "What! you still--?" "Yes, dearest, I still love you. I told you that I was not like other men, I love you for yourself. Whatever your past may have been, if you have been unfortunate, all the more reason that I should protect your future, that I should give you the shield of my name." "But there is not only myself, there is the child," she said weakly. He frowned but recovered himself instantly. "The child? I shall love it as I would my own,--is it not yours? I shall recognise it--it will be mine." "You are generous," she said, "but I cannot accept, it would be taking an unfair advantage--I should be doing you a wrong." "That is as I choose to look at it, and I don't consider it is." "But I don't love you." "Do you love anyone else?" He asked with swift scrutiny. "No." "Then you will love me in time--as long as there is no one else I am sure of that. All I ask is that you should marry me, that you should accept the protection I offer. For the child's sake you must accept--you can't refuse your child an honourable name. You will come to love me dear, I know it, and until that time I will be a brother to you, a friend, nothing more. All I ask is the privilege of helping you!" He was carried away by the nobility of the pose, it was a fine attitude _un beau giste_; it fired his histrionic imagination and gave a ring of sincerity to his voice. For a moment he believed in himself as the chivalrous rescuer of distressed damsels. "You do not know all, let me tell you all," she demurred. "Yes, you must give me your entire confidence--you owe me that." So she told him the whole story, and he pressed her hand the while to show his sympathy. At the end she paused, waiting-- "I can only repeat what I said before, dear: will you consent to marry me? If you like, don't think of yourself at all, think of me--I am a lonely man, an unhappy man, I have had a hard, disappointing life. You have become the lodestar of my life, you, Ragna! With you beside me I can do great things: I need you dear, without you life would be a desert. Last year I was very ill with typhoid fever, I nearly died; I was alone, no one loved me, no one cared whether I lived or died. If I were to be ill again who would care for me, who would nurse me? Whom have I to welcome me when I come home at night tired and discouraged? Oh, Ragna, say 'yes,' do! and I will love you always for that word!"