"I am not thinking about your happiness," he replied in his blunt way, "I'm thinking about Fay's."
"That is all I try to think about," I said, "and that is why I have appealed to you. But I see, old man, you agree with me that I have no right to set my happiness before hers by asking her to marry me and link her young life with mine."
"I certainly don't think you have any right to sacrifice Fay's happiness to your own."
"Then that settles it," I said.
"Or to a false idea of what your conscience conceives to be your duty," he went on, as if I had not spoken.
This gave me pause. "How do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean that if you love Fay, as I know you do, and if she loves you, as I believe she does, you have no right to throw away this good and perfect gift for the sake of some home-made scruple of yours. I mean that you are not justified in spoiling Fay's life, even for the pleasure of spoiling your own at the same time.
"Then what should you advise me to do?"
"I should advise you to tell Fay that you love her and to ask her to marry you, and to abide by her decision whatever it is."
"But she is so young," I pleaded—against my own cause.