Make thee glorious by my pen
And famous by my sword,
but I can do it with my brush, and I will spend my life painting you, Adelaide. Art and Love! It is too much for mortal man to possess and live.”
“Be content with art,” Adelaide replied gently. “It is a great gift, and must console you, for I cannot be your wife.”
“Cannot? Why not?”
“I will tell you. You think you love me, but it will pass. I regard you very highly, but not above duty. The feeling which I have for you, Professor Waite, cannot be love, since it is perfectly easy for me now to give you up——”
“No,” he assented; “if that is true you do not love me.”
“Listen! The reason that it is easy for me, is not that I do not respect and admire you; not that I am not grateful to you, and do not suffer in giving you pain; not that I might not come to care still more for you, but because I know that a far tenderer heart than mine is wholly yours; that some one else, who richly deserves your affection, loves you with an utter self-abnegation of which I am incapable——”
“I know of whom you speak,” he cried impatiently, “but she is a child, and will outgrow this fancy. God knows that I am innocent, Adelaide, of having ever deluded her foolish little heart.”
“All too innocent; you might have treated her more kindly!”
“What! When I can never love her?”