‘You will not crush me with the thought that there is no pleading for me there.’
‘If you had desired in honesty my regard, you should not have prejudiced me: you began here by enlisting my sympathies in your Task; you told me of your ambitions. I like these ambitions.’
‘Why not share them?’ cried he passionately.
‘You seem to forget what you ask. A woman does not give her heart as a man joins a party or an administration. It is no question of an advantage based upon a compromise. There is no sentiment of gratitude, or recompense, or reward in the gift. She simply gives that which is no longer hers to retain! She trusts to what her mind will not stop to question—she goes where she cannot help but follow.’
‘How immeasurably greater your every word makes the prize of your love.’
‘It is in no vanity that I say I know it,’ said she calmly. ‘Let us speak no more on this now.’
‘But you will not refuse to listen to me, Nina?’
‘I will read you if you write to me,’ and with a wave of good-bye she slowly left the room.
‘She is my master, even at my own game,’ said Walpole, as he sat down, and rested his head between his hands. ‘Still she is mistaken: I can write just as vaguely as I can speak, and if I could not, it would have cost me my freedom this many a day. With such a woman one might venture high, but Heaven help him when he ceased to climb the mountain!’