"Ayala," he said, "all this must be altered."
"What must be altered?"
"If you only knew, Ayala, how much you are to me."
"I wish you wouldn't, Tom. I don't want to be anything to anybody in particular."
"What I mean is, that I won't have them sit upon you. They treat you as—as,—well, as though you had only half a right to be one of them."
"No more I have. I have no right at all."
"But that's not the way I want it to be. If you were my wife—"
"Tom, pray don't."
"Why not? I'm in earnest. Why ain't I to speak as I think? Oh, Ayala, if you knew how much I think of you."
"But you shouldn't. You haven't got a right."