"It shall be as you wish."
"No, my girl, it cannot be as I wish. It cannot be."
The acquired powers of review, of analysis, of restraint were forever battling within him with the impulses of the savage. He didn't understand it himself, this tumult, this confusion, this irresolution.
"I'm all wrong somehow," he cried bitterly. "McCloud is right. I'm not fit to be trusted with a love like yours. I'd soil it or crush and destroy it. I want you; I want you like a madman. I hate McCloud because he stands between us. I can't wait and toil and suffer. I don't know how, and yet I know I must."
"Whatever you decide will be right."
"It's that makes it impossible. You trust me."
"Of course," she said with a smile.
"You don't know that I'm a coward or a fool or both. I must live up to your belief in me, and I can't. I haven't the will to go back, to leave everything I want and go back to everything I loathe. McCloud says happiness is worth fighting for, worth waiting for, but I want to take it. How do I know if I let it slip from my grasp now that I'll ever see it again? How do I know that if I do go now I'll ever see you again? Oh, Wah-na-gi, worse than all, I haven't had the courage to destroy your belief in me."
"You couldn't do that."
"You have known for a long time that I loved you. You have wondered, of course you have wondered, why I never asked you to be my wife. You saw me stand here like a helpless imbecile when I ought to have stood out and said proudly: 'She is mine. Touch her if you dare. She is my wife.' And I couldn't, I couldn't, because I am married. My wife is living in England."