"Why? I can't understand? Surely it must be good to give up your time, your labour, your hopes"—Adela did not say his heart—"for your mother and sisters' good! Why, how can it be else than good? I think it good, and shall think so."
"At any rate, Adela, I could not withstand the offer when it was made to me."
"I am sure you could not."
"So I am little more than a curate in the parish as far as the income is concerned; with this difference, that I can't change my curacy for a living should a chance offer."
Adela had never before known him to be solicitous about money for himself, and now she felt that she did not understand him. "But you have got your fellowship," said she.
"Yes, I have got my fellowship: oh, as far as that is concerned, I am better off than I could ever have expected to be. But, nevertheless, one feels—feels crippled by such an arrangement. It is quite impossible, you know, for instance, that—that—that I should do a great many things." His courage failed him as he was about to make the fatal announcement.
"What things?" said Adela, with all the boldness of innocence.
It was necessary that he should say it. "Why, for instance," he continued, "it is quite impossible, though perhaps that does not make much matter; but it is quite impossible—that I should ever marry." And still looking down upon the ground, he poked sedulously among the patterns with his stick.
"Oh!" said Adela, with a tremour in her voice, and her eye was no longer able to rest upon his face.
There was a pause during which neither of them said a word, or saw each other. As far as Adela was concerned, immediate speech was impossible. She neither cried, nor sighed, nor sobbed, nor became hysterical. She was simply dumb. She could not answer this little announcement of her neighbour's. Heretofore, when he had come to her with his sorrows, she had sympathized with him, and poured balm into his wounds. But she had no balm for him now—and no sympathy. There they sat, mute; he poking the while at the carpet, while she did not even move a limb.