"You don't say that, too—you don't say 'never'?"
She raised her eyes to his and their look thrilled through and through him. "Yes, John, I say 'never'—I'll NEVER give you up."
All the decent instincts in his nature showed in his handsome face, in which time had not as yet had the chance clearly to write character. "No wonder I love you—there never was anybody so brave and so true as you. But you must help me. I must see you and talk to you—once in a while, anyhow."
Pauline flushed painfully.
"Not till—they—let me—or I'm older, John. They've always trusted me and left me free. And I can't deceive them."
He liked this—it was another proof that she was, through and through, the sort of woman who was worthy to be his wife.
"Well—we'll wait," he said. "And if they won't be fair to us, why, we'll have a right to do the best we can." He gave her a tragic look.
"I've set my heart on you, Polly, and I never can stand it not to get what I've set my heart on. If I lost you, I'd go straight to ruin."
She might have been a great deal older and wiser and still not have seen in this a confirmation of her father's judgment of her lover. And her parents had unconsciously driven her into a mental state in which, if he had committed a crime, it would have seemed to her their fault rather than his. The next day she opened the subject with her mother—the subject that was never out of their minds.
"I can't forget him, mother. I CAN'T give him up." With the splendid confidence of youth, "I can save him—he'll do anything for my sake." With the touching ignorance of youth, "He's done nothing so very dreadful, I'm sure—I'd believe him against the whole world."