"Marion!" cried Earle, shocked and startled. But she went steadily on:—
"That, however, is a mistake. If I bring nothing, I have in myself the power to win all things. I might give up all things for a man who truly loved me, and who was poor by no fault of his own. But for a man who loves me so little that he would condemn me uselessly to a sordid, narrow life—for that man I have only one word: go!"
She rose with a gesture, as if putting him from her; but Earle caught her extended hand.
"Marion!" he said, earnestly, "stop and think! You accuse me of selfishness, but is there no selfishness in your own conduct? In asking you to share my life as it is settled, I do not ask you to share poverty: I only do not promise you wealth. Do you care nothing for me without that wealth? Consider that I can only think you weigh me in the scale with my uncle's fortune and without that fortune hold me of no account."
"You must think what you please," returned Marion. "I have told you how the matter appears to me. If you care for me, you will accept your uncle's generous offer. That is my last word."
"Then we can only part," said Earle, dropping her hand. "It is evident that the love of money is more deeply rooted in you than love of me. God forgive you, Marion, and God bring you to some sense of the relative value of things! I have the presumption to think that what I give you is worth a little more than the fortune which you rate so highly. Some day you may learn how little money can really buy of what is best worth having in human life. In that day you may remember this choice."
"I shall never regret it," she answered, proudly.
"I hope from my heart that you may not, but I shall long regret it. For I believe that you have a noble nature, to which you are doing violence. And I hoped that in the life to which I would have taken you, that nobler nature would have conquered the one which finds so much attraction in mercenary things."
The nobler nature of which he spoke struggled a little to assert itself, but was overborne by the lower and stronger nature—by anger, disappointment, and wounded pride. What! she, who had expected to sway and dominate all with whom she came in contact, to yield to this man—to give up the strongest wish, the most earnest resolve of her life? From her early youth embittered by adversity and galled by poverty, she had said to herself, "Some day I will be rich!" And now the opportunity to possess riches, and with riches the power for which she longed, was placed within her reach, and yet was held back by the selfish obstinacy of a man, who made his refusal worse by condemning her wishes. At this moment she felt that anything was more possible than to yield to him.
"You are wasting words," she observed, coldly. "My attraction for mercenary things concerns you no longer. Our folly is at an end. It was folly I see, for you have no trust in me, nor any inclination to please me; and where these things do not exist, love does not exist either."