"I should bear it."
"You couldn't. You'd break your heart and die. And if you can imagine my living there, and pouring out Mr. Barry's tea for him, you must imagine also what I should have to say to myself about you. 'He will die, of course. But then he has come to that sort of age at which it doesn't much signify.' Then I should go on with Mr. Barry's tea. He'd come to kiss me when he went away, and I—should plunge a knife into him."
"Dolly!"
"Or into myself, which would be more likely. Fancy that man calling me Dolly." Then she got up and stood behind his chair and put her arm round his neck. "Would you like to kiss him?—or any man, for the matter of that? There is no one else to whom my fancy strays, but I think that I should murder them all,—or commit suicide. In the first place, I should want my husband to be a gentleman. There are not a great many gentlemen about."
"You are fastidious."
"Come now;—be honest; is our Mr. Barry a gentleman?" Then there was a pause, during which she waited for a reply. "I will have an answer. I have a right to demand an answer to that question, since you have proposed the man to me as a husband."
"Nay, I have not proposed him."
"You have expressed a regret that I have not accepted him. Is he a gentleman?"
"Well;—yes; I think he is."
"Mind; we are sworn, and you are bound to speak the truth. What right has he to be a gentleman? Who was his father and who was his mother? Of what kind were his nursery belongings? He has become an attorney, and so have you. But has there been any one to whisper to him among his teachings that in that profession, as in all others, there should be a sense of high honor to guide him? He must not cheat, or do anything to cause him to be struck off the rolls; but is it not with him what his client wants, and not what honor demands? And in the daily intercourse of life would he satisfy what you call my fastidiousness?"