"I think I know what you mean, child," she said. "But of course you are wrong. Utterly, hopelessly, pitiably wrong. He isn't that sort of a man. You should know that, dear."
"I don't underestimate him—far from that," said Louise. "It is just because he isn't that sort of a man, as you say, that I shrink from the thought of being unfair with him—of permitting him to do himself an injustice."
"But," said Laura, "he is not a cubbish, haphazard lad. He is a man—a real man. He knows and gauges the world. More and better than that, he knows himself. I should have difficulty in recalling the name of any man who knows his mind better than John Blythe does his."
"I know that, Laura," said Louise. "But his unselfishness is too fine a thing to be taken advantage of. He has made his way unaided. He has had a long fight. He will never cease to mount. Why should I hamper him?"
"Hamper him!" exclaimed Laura. "Child, how can the woman a man loves hamper him?"
"Your partiality causes you to generalize, dear," said Louise. "My case—our case, if you will—is entirely different." She took a turn up and down the room and then confronted Laura calmly. "Don't you know what the world—his world—would say if he married me?"
Laura shrugged impatiently.
"The 'They Sayers'!" she exclaimed. "The 'They Sayers' say this, they say that, they say the other thing. And what does their 'They-Saying' amount to?"
"It would amount to nothing at all in his estimation—I am only too sure of that," replied Louise. "But a man who is making his way in the world must even take heed of the 'They-Sayers,' as you call them. He cannot ignore them. His unselfish impulse would be, not only to ignore them, but to flaunt them; and all on my account. It would, I think, be simply contemptible for me to permit him to do that."
Laura studied for a moment, then shook her head despairingly.