“Well?” I said, nerving myself as if for some process of torture, dreading, fearing I should give away suddenly, and shame myself for ever, beyond repair, beyond recall.
“It is a plain question, and I only want a plain Yes or No,” he went on. “Can you love me as a husband?”
I stood still, I gasped. Terror! I had to tell the truth, and that truth was horrible. Suddenly I bethought me how to be true both to myself and to him.
“It must be plain Yes or plain No?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Then, No!” I cried, emphatically.
He thrust his hands into his pockets, drew a deep sigh, and stared at me. His face was in the shadow: I could not see it; but I felt his eyes fixed upon me.
“Thank you for your frankness,” he said, just when the silence was getting unendurable, and I dreaded giving way and flinging myself at his knees, or something equally disgraceful. Oh, the hard, hard fight it was to keep cool, silent! “Then the dream is over,” he went on, more to himself than to me, beginning to walk along the road again. “I might have known it without asking you, child; but it is best to kill a delusion right out, at once.”
“What delusion?” I asked.
“The delusion that you, or, for the matter of that, any woman, could care to be the wife of a man so totally devoid of interest and charm as myself,” he said, bitterly. “Thank heaven! it will never come in my way to ask any woman that question again.”