"Well, I hardly know that I am prepared to explain the 'as how' even to you. I am about as thick-skinned a man in such matters as you may find anywhere, but I do not know that even I can bring myself to tell the 'as how.' The 'as how' was very clear in one respect. It was manifest that she knew her own mind, which is a knowledge not in the possession of all young ladies. She told me that she could not marry me."
"I do not believe it."
"Not that she told me so?"
"Not that she knew her own mind. She is a little simple fool, who with some vagary in her brain is throwing away utterly her own happiness, while she is vexing you."
"As to the vexation you are right."
"Cross-grained little idiot!"
"An idiot she certainly is not; and as to being cross-grained I have never found it. A human being with the grains running more directly all in the same way I have never come across."
"Do not talk to me, Jonathan, like that," she said. "When I call her cross-grained I mean that she is running counter to her own happiness."
"I cannot tell anything about that. I should have endeavoured, I think, to make her happy. She has certainly run counter to my happiness."
"And now?"