"No, no. You would not, I know, do so willingly."
"And yet I must hurt him a little. I hope it will hurt him just a little." Mrs. Roden stared at her. "Oh, if I could make him understand it all! If I could bid him be a man, so that it should wound him only for a short time."
"What wound!"
"Did you think that I could take him, I, the daughter of a City clerk, to go and sit in his halls, and shame him before all the world, because he had thought fit to make me his wife? Never!"
"Marion, Marion!"
"Because he has made a mistake which has honoured me, shall I mistake also, so as to dishonour him? Because he has not seen the distance, shall I be blind to it? He would have given himself up for me. Shall I not be able to make a sacrifice? To such a one as I am to sacrifice myself is all that I can do in the world."
"Is it such a sacrifice?"
"Could it be that I should not love him? When such a one comes, casting his pearls about, throwing sweet odours through the air, whispering words which are soft-sounding as music in the heavens, whispering them to me, casting them at me, turning on me the laughing glances of his young eyes, how could I help to love him? Do you remember when for a moment he knelt almost at my feet, and told me that I was his friend, and spoke to me of his hearth? Did you think that that did not move me?"
"So soon, my child;—so soon?"
"In a moment. Is it not so that it is done always?"