"And yet you don't consider marrying him?"
"No, sir. I don't love him."
Matters had suddenly become rather serious.
"You would rather work for your living than marry a man you don't love?" Crane asked, almost in spite of himself.
For the first time the cook looked up, straight at him, as she answered:
"I think I would rather die, sir."
This time it was Crane's eyes that dropped. Fortunately, he reflected, she could not have any idea how sharply her remark had touched his own inner state. How clearly she saw that it was wrong to do just what he was contemplating doing—to marry for prudence, rather than for love. He found himself speculating on the genesis of the moral sense, how it developed in difficulties rather than in ease. That was why he could learn something on the subject from his cook. Here was a girl working for her living, working hard and long, for wages which though he had once, he remembered, told Reed they seemed excessive, now appeared to him the merest pittance; certainly it seemed as if all the hardships of such a life would be smoothed away by this suggested marriage, and yet she could assert clearly that she would rather die than make it; whereas he, with nothing very much at stake, had actually been contemplating for several months the making of just such a marriage—He was interrupted by her respectful tones:
"Will that be all, sir?"
"Yes," he answered in a voice that lacked finality. "I suppose that's all, except if that fellow comes bothering you any more, let me know, and I'll tell him what I think of him."
Jane-Ellen lifted the corner of her mouth in a terrible smile.