"You would not. You would keep your promise. I should trust you with my life."
"Ah, then, you have your answer! You expect me to keep my promises to you, but to no one else. Is that the honourable thing? Now, listen to me, Mr. Franklin. I shall keep my promise as a Beauchamp should—as a Beauchamp shall. I have told you long ago what that promise was. I promised to love, to marry him—Mr. Henry Fairfax—years ago. I promised never to love any one else so long as I lived. He—he's keeping his promise now—back there—in old Virginia, now. How would I be keeping mine—how am I keeping mine, now, even listening to you so long? Take me back; take me home. I'm going to—going to keep my promise, sir! I'm going to keep it!"
Franklin's heart stood cold. "You're going to keep your promise," he said slowly and coldly. "You're going to keep a girl's promise, from which death released you years ago—released you honourably. You were too young then to know what you were doing—-you didn't know what love could mean—yet you are released from that promise. And now, for the sake of a mere sentiment, you are going to ruin my life for me, and you're going to ruin your own life, throw it away, all alone out here, with nothing about you such as you ought to have. And you call that honour?"
"Well, then, call it choice!" said Mary Ellen, with what she took to be a noble lie upon her lips. "It is ended!"
Franklin sat cold and dumb at this, all the world seeming to him to have gone quite blank. He could not at first grasp this sentence in its full effect, it meant so much to him. He shivered, and a sigh broke from him as from one hurt deep and knowing that his hurt is fatal. Yet, after his fashion, he fought mute, struggling for some time before he dared trust his voice or his emotions.
"Very well," he said. "I'll not crawl—not for any woman on earth!
It's over. I'm sorry. Dear little woman, I wanted to be your friend.
I wanted to take care of you. I wanted to love you and to see if I
couldn't make a future for us both."
"My future is done. Leave me. Find some one else to love."
"Thank you. You do indeed value me very high!" he replied, setting his jaws hard together.
"They tell me men love the nearest woman always. I was the only one—"
"Yes, you were the only one," said Franklin slowly, "and you always will be the only one. Good-bye."