"And I to you. That goes without telling. But as neither of us have got the money, what are we to do? I know what we had better not do. We had better not make each other unhappy by what people call recriminations."
"I don't suppose that anything I say can affect your happiness."
"Yes, it does; very much. It makes me think of deep rivers, and high columns; of express trains and prussic acid. Well as we have known each other, you have never found out how unfortunately soft I am."
"Very soft!"
"I am. This troubles me so that I ride over awfully big places, thinking that I might perhaps be lucky enough to break my neck."
"What must I feel, who have no way of amusing myself at all?"
"Drop it. I know it is a hard thing for me to say. I know it will sound heartless. But I am bound to say so. It is for your sake. I can't hurt myself. It does me no harm that everybody knows that I am philandering after you; but it is the very deuce for you." She was silent for a moment. Then he said again emphatically, "Drop it."
"I can't drop it," she said, through her tears.
"Then what are we to do?" As he asked this question, he approached her and put his arm round her waist. This he did in momentary vacillating mercy,—not because of the charm of the thing to himself, but through his own inability not to give her some token of affection.
"Marry," she said, in a whisper.