Léon planned in advance the setting for his proposal. He would make it
in the English way, to the girl herself. Léon had never proposed
marriage before, and he gave the affair his best attention.
The Baths of Caracalla are never very crowded and at certain times of
the day they are extraordinarily solitary.
Léon knew one of the chief excavators and it was part of his idea to
take the entire family of Pinsent with the exception of Rose into the
underground regions. The excavator, who was an enthusiast, could be
calculated to hold them there for a full hour. Rose, who never liked
underground temples, agreed easily enough to remain in the open air, and
Léon disappeared with the others. She was a little puzzled over
Baedeker’s description of the Baths of Caracalla, once she got the
tepidarium in her head she felt she could get on quite easily, but the
tepidarium eluded her. The great roofless, sunny space, wouldn’t
contract itself reasonably, into a guide book, and then she heard Léon’s
returning footsteps.
“Has anything happened?” she asked in some alarm.
“That is for you to say,” answered Léon with unusual gravity. “For my
part I have found you--and that for the moment is enough.”
“Didn’t you mean to stay down there, then?” asked Rose in some
bewilderment.
“Never in the world,” said Léon more lightly. “Am I the kind of man to
engage myself with the temple of _Mithras, je m’en fiche de Mithras_! I
beg your pardon--I should say, in the phrase of your American cousins, I
have no use for him!”
There was no one but themselves in the Baths of Caracalla, the great
pink walls stretched spaciously around them, the blue sky benignantly
overhead, under foot the fresh spring grasses spread like an emerald
fire.
“I suppose we ought to go all over it properly,” Rose asked a little
wistfully. Léon shook his head. “Why should we do that?” he objected.
“Let us leave propriety to Mithras. If ancient history is true, he stood
much in need of it. For ourselves, let us sit down in this corner--under
the shelter of the ivy--and look at the pink blossoms in front of us. If
you had not informed me how serious it is to pay compliments, I should
have told that tree--that it was very nearly as pretty as the English
complexion; but as I am a very truthful man and have no wish to curry
favor with any one, I should have added, not quite.”
Rose smiled a little tremulously. She said nothing, but she hoped Léon
would go on talking. She turned her eyes on the almond tree; its pale
pink flowers hung above them like a little cloud.
A silence fell between them, a significant, tremendous silence. Rose
became aware that she was alone with Léon in a way in which she had
never been alone with any one before. Their privacy was as breathless as
danger. In a moment more it seemed to Rose something tremendous would
have happened like an earthquake or a volcano, but probably much nicer
than these manifestations of nature.
Then she knew that it had happened already. Léon had caught both her
hands in his. “Mademoiselle,” he asked her in a queer, strained voice,
“Has any man ever kissed you before?”
She lifted frightened, fluttering eyes to his--they were wonderful in
their candor.
“No!” she whispered. “No!”
“_Alors!_ You will not be able to say that again!” he said firmly,
bending towards her. But though his eyes held hers with the intentness
of a hawk, he waited for her answering surrender. She startled him by
the urgency of her protest. “Oh, don’t! Don’t!” she pleaded. “Please let
me go!” Instantly he released her.
“You don’t like me enough?” he asked her in surprise. “Do you think I am
such a brute that I would kiss you against your will? Why, never in the
world! That is no kiss, that is not a mutual pleasure. But why do you
say ‘No’ to me, Rose?--for your eyes--your eyes say ‘Yes’!”
“Oh, no!” she answered quickly. “I know you wouldn’t do anything I
shouldn’t like, but don’t you see I can’t let you--it’s just because
I--I do like you so much.” She turned her face away from him, her eyes
filled suddenly with tears. “Please don’t say any more,” she urged. “I
know with you it’s different--please go away.”
But Léon sat down near her. “I will do anything in the world you want,”
he said firmly, “except go away. After what you have said you cannot
expect me to do that. You must listen to me a little now--are you
listening, Rose?”
She nodded her head.
“I am going to say something that will give you pain,” Léon began
slowly. “I had not meant to say it, I had meant, if I were fortunate
enough, to give you pleasure, but when you say you like me you make me
feel that I must not be a coward. Rose--I am a bad man.”
She turned startled, unbelieving eyes upon him. What he said was painful
to her, but she had been expecting a different kind of pain.
“Yes,” he said gravely. “It is true. I am not in the least worth your
regard. I do not think I shall make a good husband even for you. I say
this to you because I am going to add the little thing I had hoped might
give you pleasure. _Je vous aime_, Mademoiselle.” The words had a
sharper significance in his own tongue. After he had said them he looked
for the first time away from her, towards the almond blossom tree. “You
are as fine, as beautiful as that tree,” he murmured, “and oh, my dear,
you know as little--as these frail pink flowers--about a man like me.
How can I ask you to trust me?”
Fear crept into her eyes. “Léon,” she whispered, “what you said just now
was true, wasn’t it?”
“That I am bad?” he asked bitterly. “Yes--it is true--it would be a poor
joke, such an assertion, just now, though perhaps it is a poorer truth.
It is also true that I would have kept it from you--if you had not
greatly moved me.”
“No--I didn’t mean that,” she said gently. “I meant the other thing you
said.”
He turned quickly. “That I love you?” he asked.
Rose nodded. “Because,” she whispered, “I--I would take the risk--if you
loved me.”
He took her hand and kissed it, and then with a fierce gentleness that
seemed impatient of its own restraint, he drew her into his arms and
pressed his lips to hers. “You child! You child!” he murmured. “God
punish me--if I ever fail you--” But even with his lips against her
lips--he envisaged his own failure.
She drew away from him. “Léon,” she said, “I want you to let me go home
alone--”
He looked at her in surprise--a moment before she had seemed so
helpless, so incapable of asserting her surrendered will, and now,
facing him with her steady eyes, she seemed an independent, self-reliant
woman. For an instant he wondered if he thoroughly understood her, but
he put this misgiving away from him.
“You must do whatever you wish, of course,” he said gently. “But it
is--not that you are unhappy or that you are afraid?”
She turned towards him fiercely. “Yes,” she said, “I am afraid. How can
any one be as happy as I am and not be afraid?”
He drew a long breath, he had forgotten that this was her first love.
They walked together to the gates in silence.
Across the road the mortuary chapel opened its big iron doors to let a
common Roman funeral pass out. Rose shuddered, and turned wide eyes of
terror on Léon. “Oh!” she said, “How can God let anybody die!”
He put her into a carriage, soothing her as best he could, but his own
hands trembled. He had not realized how serious this affair was going to
be.
It was as serious as death.