"That is to be my answer?"
"Yes, that is to be your answer. Ask yourself, and you will know that there is no other answer that I can honestly make you."
"How is your own heart in the affair?"
There she was weak, and knew as she spoke that she was weak. "It matters not at all," she said.
"It matters not at all?" he repeated after her. "I can understand that my happiness should be nothing. If you and he were satisfied, of course it would be nothing. If you were satisfied, there would be an end to it; because if your pleasure and his work together, I must necessarily be left out in the cold. But it is not so. I take upon myself to say that you are not satisfied."
"You will not allow me to answer for myself?"
"No, not in this matter. Will you dare to tell me that you do not love me?" She remained silent before him, and then he went on to reason with her. "You do not deny it. I hear it in your voice and see it in your face. When we parted in Norwich, did you not love me then?"
"I shall answer no such question. A young woman has often to change her mind as to whom she loves, before she can settle down as one man's wife or another's."
"You do not dare to be true. If I am rough with you, it is for your sake as well as my own. We are young, and, as was natural, we learnt to love each other. Then you came here and were alone in the world, and I was gone. Though there had been no word of marriage between us, I had hoped that I might be remembered in my absence. Perhaps you did remember me. I cannot think that I was ever absent from your heart; but I was away, and you could not know how loyal I was to my thoughts of you. I am not blaming you, Mary. I can well understand that you were eating his bread and drinking his cup, and that it appeared to you that everything was due to him. You could not have gone on eating his bread unless you had surrendered yourself to his wishes. You must have gone from this, and have had no home to which to go. It is all true. But the pity of it, Mary; the pity of it!"
"He has done the best he could by me."