"You regret it,—you to regret anything!" said Laura, haughtily, her hauteur striking through her paleness reproachfully. "You—a man! I would sell my soul, if I have a soul, to be a man, to be able to live to myself, to be delivered from the torment of being and feeling what nobody cares for."
"If we live to ourselves, we men,—if I may call myself a man,—we are not less tormented, and not less because men are expected to bear up, and may not give themselves relief in softer sorrow. My dear Miss Lemark, it appears to me that if we allow ourselves to sink, either for grief or joy, it matters not which, we are very much to blame, and more to be pitied. There is ever a hope, even for the hopeless, as they think themselves; how much more for those who need not and must not despair! And those who are born with the most hopeful temper find that they cannot exist without faith."
"That is the way the people always talk who have everything the world can give them,—who have more than everything they wish for; who have all their love cared for; who may express it without being mocked, and worship without being trampled on. You are the most enviable person in the whole world except one, and I do not envy her, but I do envy you."
"Very amiable, Miss Lemark!" and I felt my old wrath rising, yet smiled it down. "You see all this is a conjecture on your part; you cannot know what I feel, nor is it for you to say that because I am a man I can have exactly what I please. Very possibly, precisely because I am a man, I cannot. But anyhow, I shall not betray myself, nor is it ever safe to betray ourselves, unless we cannot help it."
"I do not care about betraying myself; I am miserable, and I will have comfort,—comfort is for the miserable!"
"Not the comfort a human heart can bring you, however soft it may chance to be."
"I should hate a soft heart's comfort; I would not take it. It is because you are not soft-hearted I want yours."
"I would willingly bestow it upon you if I knew how; but you know that Keble says: "Whom oil and balsams kill, what salve can cure?'"
"I do not know Keble."
"Then you ought to cultivate his acquaintance, Miss Lemark, as a poet, at least, if not as a gentleman."