"That, Frank, is violent language,—and foolish."
"And though I love you so intensely that whenever I see her the memory of you becomes an agony to me."
"Such language is only more violent and more foolish."
"Surely not, if I have made up my mind at last, that I never will willingly see Miss Tringle again." Here he got up, and walking across the rug, stood over her, and waited as though expecting some word from her. But she, putting her two hands up to her head, and brushing her hair away from her forehead, looked up to him for what further words might come to him. "Surely not," he continued, "if I have made up my mind at last, that nothing shall ever again serve to rob me of your love,—if I may still hope to possess it."
"Oh, Frank!" she said, "how mean I am to be a creature obedient to the whistle of such a master as you!"
"But are you obedient?"
"You know that well enough. I have had no Gertrude with whom I have vacillated, whether for the sake of love or lucre. Whatever you may be,—whether mean or noble,—you are the only man with whom I can endure to live, for whom I would endure to die. Of course I had not expected that your love should be like mine. How should it be so, seeing that you are a man and that I am but a woman." Here he attempted to seat himself by her on the sofa, which she occupied, but she gently repulsed him, motioning him towards the chair which he had occupied, "Sit there, Frank," she said, "so that we may look into each other's faces and talk seriously. Is it to come to this then, that I am to ruin you at last?"
"There will be no ruin."
"But there will, if we are married now. Shall I tell you the kind of life which would satisfy me?"
"Some little place abroad?" he asked.