Mattie winced for an instant, then her quiet voice, firm and even as the way she had chosen for herself, replied to this—
"Let me proceed, Sidney. You will hear me out fairly, I am sure."
"Why not say No at once?—you mean to tell me that you do not care to be my wife, and share my home. Is not that your answer?"
"Yes—but I cannot let you think that I have been insensible to your offer, or not weighed it carefully in my mind before I thought that it was not right that I should marry you. Sidney, had it pleased God never to have restored your sight, I would have been your faithful wife, serving you as I alone was able, perhaps, and rendering you content with me."
"I see. You would have taken pity on my loneliness—with that strange idea of being grateful for past kindnesses of a trivial description, you would have sacrificed your happiness in an attempt to attain mine. Mattie, it would have been a terrible failure."
"No."
"I say a terrible failure, which would have embittered both lives in lieu of promoting the happiness of either. I should have discovered the motives which had placed you at my side, and felt too keenly the encumbrance that I was upon you."
"I think not!—I am sure not!"
She was anxious to defend herself, to hold her best in his estimation yet, but she feared the betrayal of her secret. She could have told him how, for a few fleeting days, she had pictured her greatest happiness to be ever near him, striving to brighten every thought, and vary the monotony of every hour—sustaining, comforting, and worshipping. She could have told him of the affection of a whole life that had been spent in thinking of him, praying for him; but she held her peace, and let him think that she had never loved him. In the end, she saw that it was best to turn him from his purpose.
"I would have married you, Sidney, in affliction—out of gratitude, if you choose to word it so, but a gratitude that you would have never known from love," she ventured to say; "but now, when the new life, to which you will shortly turn your steps, is far removed from mine, when you require no help from me, and when there are others, fairer, better, and so much more worthy of you, I cannot hold you to a promise of which you must repent."