"But it seemed to me just now that you were so happy with him."
"I am never happy with him;—but yet I am as though I were in heaven."
"Marion!"
"I am never happy. I know that it cannot be, that it will not be, as he would have it. I know that I am letting him waste his sweetness all in vain. There should be some one else, oh, so different from me! There should be one like himself, beautiful, strong in health, with hot eager blood in her veins, with a grand name, with grand eyes and a broad brow and a noble figure, one who, in taking his name, will give him as much as she takes—one, above all, who will not pine and fade before his eyes, and trouble him during her short life with sickness and doctors and all the fading hopes of a hopeless invalid. And yet I let him come, and I have told him how dearly I love him. He comes and he sees it in my eyes. And then it is so glorious, to be loved as he loves. Oh, Mrs. Roden, he kissed me." That to Mrs. Roden did not seem to be extraordinary; but, not knowing what to say to it at the moment, she also kissed the girl. "Then I told him that he must go, and never come back to me again."
"Were you angry with him?"
"Angry with him! With myself I was angry. I had given him the right to do it. How could I be angry with him? And what does it matter;—except for his sake? If he could only understand! If he would only know that I am in earnest when I speak to him! But I am weak in everything except one thing. He will never make me say that I will be his wife."
"My Marion! Dear Marion!"
"But father wishes it."
"Wishes you to become his wife?"
"He wishes it. Why should I not be like any other girl, he says. How can I tell him? How can I say that I am not like to other girls because of my darling, my own dearest mother? And yet he does not know it. He does not see it, though he has seen so much. He will not see it till I am there, on my bed, unable to come to him when he wants me."