“I like you very much without trying!”
“Oh, you know what I mean, you tormenting girl! Can’t you—you—can’t you love me well enough to be my own? Speak! Answer! Tell me, Rose!”
“Oh, Robert, how many times have I told you—no?”
“I—but I won’t take no for an answer! All my affections and hopes are freighted in you, and I will not resign you; I will not, Rose. I will go on hoping in spite of you—hoping against hope! It is impossible—mind I say impossible—any one loving as I do, should not win love in return. It does seem to me as if it would be unjust in heaven to permit it!”
He spoke with impatient, passionate vehemence and earnestness.
Rosalie watched and heard him with wondering and sorrowing interest. She gravely said—
“‘It is impossible that one loving so much should not win love in return,’ you say? Yes, it does seem impossible, if we did not know it to be often really possible. It does seem unjust!”
“You acknowledge it! You own it to be unjust that I should give you so much—give you all—my entire heart, with all its affections and hopes—and get back nothing, nothing in return—or next to it—only ‘esteem,’ forsooth! and ‘friendship!’ That provokes and exasperates me beyond endurance! Rosalie, I don’t want your esteem or friendship. I refuse and repudiate it! I reject and repulse it! I will have none of it! Give me nothing, or give me your whole heart and hand!”
“I would to Heaven I could do it, Robert! I would to Heaven I could give you my heart. I am ready to say that if I could, I should then be a happy and enviable girl, because I believe you a most excellent young man, whose only weakness is your regard for me. But I cannot, Robert. With all my friendship for you”—
“Don’t name it!”