"You're determined to try the impossible."
"It won't be the impossible till he tells me so."
He seemed for a second or two to study me. "Suppose I accepted you as what you say you are—as a young woman of good antecedents and honorable character. Would you still persist in the effort to force yourself on a family that didn't want you?"
I confess that in the language Mr. Strangways and I had used in the morning, he had me here "on the hip." To force myself on a family that didn't want me would normally have been the last of my desires. But I was fighting now for something that went beyond my desires—something larger—something national, as I conceived of nationality—something human—though I couldn't have said exactly what it was. I answered only after long deliberation.
"I couldn't stop to consider a family. My object would be to marry the man who loved me—and whom I loved."
"So that you'd face the humiliation—"
"It wouldn't be humiliation, because it would have nothing to do with me. It would pass into another sphere."
"It wouldn't be another sphere to him."
"I should have to let him take care of that. It's all I can manage to look out for myself—"
There seemed to be some admiration in his tone.