"Do you love me?"
"Not if I loved you with all my heart,—" and she spread out her arms as though to assure herself how she did love him with all her very soul,—"would I for that be brought even to think of doing the thing that you ask me."
"Marion!"
"No,—no. We are utterly unfit for each other." She had made her first declaration as to duty, and now she was going on as to that second profession which she intended should be, if possible, the last. "You are as high as blood and wealth and great friends can make you. I am nothing. You have called me a lady."
"If God ever made one, you are she."
"He has made me better. He has made me a woman. But others would not call me a lady. I cannot talk as they do, sit as they do, act as they do,—even think as they do. I know myself, and I will not presume to make myself the wife of such a man as you." As she said this there came a flush across her face, and a fire in her eye, and, as though conquered by her own emotion, she sank again upon the sofa.
"Do you love me, Marion?"
"I do," she said, standing once more erect upon her feet. "There shall be no shadow of a lie between us. I do love you, Lord Hampstead. I will have nothing to make me blush in my own esteem when I think of you. How should it be other than that a girl such as I should love such a one as you when you ask me with words so sweet!"
"Then, Marion, you shall be my own."
"Oh, yes, I must now be yours,—while I am alive. You have so far conquered me." As he attempted to take her in his arms she retreated from him; but so gently that her very gentleness repressed him. "If never loving another is to be yours,—if to pray for you night and day as the dearest one of all, is to be yours,—if to remind myself every hour that all my thoughts are due to you, if to think of you so that I may console myself with knowing that one so high and so good has condescended to regard me,—if that is to be yours,—then I am yours; then shall I surely be yours while I live. But it must be only with my thoughts, only with my prayers, only with all my heart."