‘Don’t look like that, Ella.’ And then, with a burst of passion and grief: ‘My darling, what does it matter?’ And then again, almost without a stop, ‘Ella, will you marry me?’
For a moment she looks at him as if not understanding. Then a most wonderful light springs into her eyes. But when he would go to her and take her in his arms, she puts out hers, and almost imperiously forbids him.
‘No,’ says she clearly, if a little wildly perhaps.
‘But why—why? Oh, this is nonsense! You know—you must have known for a long time—that I love you.’
‘I did not know,’ says she faintly. ‘I—even now it seems impossible. Don’t!’ as he makes a movement towards her. ‘Don’t misunderstand me. I know now’—her voice breaking a little—‘that it might have been. But what is impossible’—her young voice growing rounder, fuller, and unutterably wretched—‘is that I should marry you.’
‘You think because——’
But she sweeps his words aside.
‘It is useless,’ says she, with a strength strange in one so few miles advanced upon life’s roadway, until one remembers how sad and eventful those few miles she has trodden have been—how full of miserable knowledge, how full of the cruel lesson—how to bear! ‘I am nobody, less than nobody. And you—are somebody. Do you think I would consent to ruin your life—the life of the only one who has—who has ever stood my friend?’
‘This gratitude is absurd!’ he breaks in eagerly. ‘What have I done for you? Let you the Cottage at a fair rental!’
‘Ah, no!’ There is irrepressible sadness in her air. She struggles with herself, holding her hands against her eyes for a little while—pressing them hard, as if to keep down her emotion. ‘I won’t—I can’t go into it,’ says she brokenly. ‘But when I forget—Mr. Wyndham’—she turns upon him passionately—‘never ask me that question again. Nothing on earth would induce me to link my name with yours.’ She pauses, and a hot blush covers her face. ‘My name!’—she repeats her words with determination, though he can see how the determination hurts her—‘I have no name.’