"They might marry too," mutters Sinclair gloomily. Then suddenly bending forward again, he says with trembling voice, "Honor, dear child, do not trifle with me. You know that I have loved you for a long, long time, almost ever since I first knew you. But I have been waiting—oh, such a weary waiting!—until I should have something else to offer you besides my worthless self. And now that I can do it, you are not going to disappoint me, dear? Say you will be my wife, Honor."
"YOU ARE NOT GOING TO DISAPPOINT ME, HONOR?"
"O don't, please don't!" cries the girl, trying distractedly to get possession of her own hands again. "O, Dr. Sinclair, I wish you had not asked me!"
"Why?" he asks again quietly.
"Because—because, I cannot bear to seem ungrateful or unkind, and yet I must. O, will you please let me go?"
"I will let you go when you have answered me two questions, Honor," he says, dropping her hands and drawing back. "Will you first tell me why you are obliged to disappoint me?"
Honor struggles bravely to keep back her tears, while she says in a low voice: "I could not leave them, Dr. Sinclair. My mother and sisters and the boys, I mean. Somehow I have never thought of such a thing as marrying for myself."
"Not lately, Honor?"