“I am not so wholly bad, Delia,” he said in a moment. “I came back to marry you. It will not change or mend the past; but it is the best I can do now.”
“It is no use to talk of that,” she returned wearily; “you and I are done with each other. Even I can see that.”
She was spent with the violence of her emotions, and only longed to have Farnsworth leave her. She was keenly sensitive now of the nicety of his attire, the contrast between him and her meagre surroundings. The shamefacedness of the poor overwhelmed her. She rose with uneven steps and trembling hands, and began to put things to rights a little. She snuffed the ill-conditioned candle, and trimmed the fire, whose drift-wood sent out tongues of colored flame. She set back into their usual gaunt and vulgar order the chairs which had been disturbed.
Farnsworth watched her with an aching heart.
“Delia,” he said at length, “come and sit down. We must decide what it is best to do.”
She obeyed him, although with evident reluctance. All the brief dignity which her elevation of mood had imparted had vanished now, leaving her more haggard and worn than ever. A faded, prematurely old woman, she sat twisting her red, stained hands in a vain attempt to hide their ugliness in the folds of her poor dress. Even self-pity in Farnsworth’s breast began to vanish in the depth of compassion which the sexton excited.
“Delia,” he said, “I must think for us both, and for the boy. He must be considered. For his sake we must be married.”
It was at once with a sense of relief and of humiliation that he saw how she shrank from this proposition. To have fallen from godhood in the meanest woman’s eyes is the keenest thrust at man’s pride. It gave Farnsworth a new conception that the gulf between them must look as impassable from her side as from his. He had thus far been too much absorbed in the sacrifices he himself was making to consider that all the desirabilities of his world would not appeal to her as to him,—that its very fulness and richness which so held and delighted him would confuse and repel her.
“It is of no use!” he exclaimed, starting up. “I must have time to think. I will come back in the morning. Think yourself, Delia,—not of me, or even of yourself, so much as of the boy. It is of him that we must have the first care. Nothing can much change our lives; but the world is before him. Goodnight.”