"It isn't only the thing itself, darling, but I don't like you to refuse me. It hurts me that you won't do what I ask of you."
"If it were anything else, George."
"But it isn't anything else. It is just that I want you to myself—all to myself, after we are married."
"Don't ask me, dearest. If you only knew how it makes me suffer."
Her voice was a caress when she answered, but, as he told himself passionately, she had not yielded an inch. Once again he had run against the iron hidden under the bloom.
"Then you refuse absolutely?" he asked, and though his voice quivered still, it was no longer from tenderness. He hated stubbornness, and, most of all, he hated it in the woman who was going to be his wife. A life of continual contradiction, he felt, would be intolerable. A strong will, which he had always admired in himself, became a positive failing in Gabriella. A woman's strength lay, after all, not in force of character, but in sweetness of nature. And yet how lovely she was! How soft, how sweet she looked as she gazed up at him with her radiant eyes. There was a fascination for him in her tall slenderness, in the graceful curve of her head, which drooped slightly like a dark flower on its stem. Everything about her charmed him, and yet he had never called her beautiful in his thoughts.
"I told you how it was, dear, when you first asked me to marry you," she said, with infinite patience. "I told you that it wasn't fair to ask you to take mother, but that I couldn't possibly leave her alone in her old age. Jane's home is wretchedly unhappy—she can never tell when Charley is to be counted on—and it would kill mother to be dependent on Charley even if he were willing. I see your side, George, indeed, indeed, I do, but I can't—I simply can't act differently. I have always known it was my duty to look after mother—nothing can change that, not even love. She worked for us while we were little, and it is trouble that has made her what she is to-day. You must see that I am right, George; you can't possibly help it."
But he couldn't see it. If the truth had been twice as evident, if Gabriella had been twice as reasonable, he could still have seen only his wishes.
"I am only asking you to do what is best for us both, Gabriella."
"But how can it be best for me to become an ungrateful child, George?"