“I am going to speak to you, Doady. I am going to say something I have often thought of saying, lately. You won’t mind?” with a gentle look.
“Mind, my darling?”
“Because I don’t know what you will think, or what you may have thought sometimes. Perhaps you have often thought the same. Doady, dear, I am afraid I was too young.”
I lay my face upon the pillow by her, and she looks into my eyes, and speaks very softly. Gradually, as she goes on, I feel, with a stricken heart, that she is speaking of herself as past.
“I am afraid, dear, I was too young. I don’t mean in years only, but in experience, and thoughts, and everything. I was such a silly little creature! I am afraid it would have been better, if we had only loved each other as a boy and girl, and forgotten it. I have begun to think I was not fit to be a wife.”
I try to stay my tears, and to reply, “Oh, Dora, love, as fit as I to be a husband!”
“I don’t know,” with the old shake of her curls. “Perhaps! But, if I had been more fit to be married, I might have made you more so, too. Besides, you are very clever, and I never was.”
“We have been very happy, my sweet Dora.”
“I was very happy, very. But, as years went on, my dear boy would have wearied of his child-wife. She would have been less and less a companion for him. He would have been more and more sensible of what was wanting in his home. She wouldn’t have improved. It is better as it is.”
“Oh, Dora, dearest, dearest, do not speak to me so. Every word seems a reproach!”