'No, certainly not!'
'Tell me, then, and fear not to be sincere. Is it to some other attachment—' a sort of shivering fit stopt her for a moment, but she recovered from it by a pride that seemed to burn through every vein, as she added, 'or is it to innate repugnance that I owe your dislike?'
'Dislike? repugnance?' Harleigh repeated, with quickness, 'can Elinor be, at once, so generous and so unjust? Can she delineate her own feelings with so touching and so glowing a pencil, yet so ill describe, or so wilfully fail in comprehending mine?'
'Dare, then, to be ingenuous, and save me, Harleigh,—if with truth you can, the depression, the shame, of being rejected from impenetrable apathy! I ought, I know, to be above such narrow punctilio, and to allow the independence of your liberty; but I did not fall into the refining hands of philosophy, early enough to eradicate wholly from my mind, all dregs of the clinging first impressions of habit and education. Say, then, Harleigh, if it be in your power so to say, that it is not a free heart which thus coldly disdains me; that it is not a disengaged mind which refuses me its sympathy! that it is not to personal aversion, but to some previous regard, that I owe your insensibility! To me the event will be the same, but the failure will be less ignoble.'
'How difficult, O Elinor!—how next to impossible such a statement makes every species of answer!'
'At a period, Harleigh, awful and finite to our intercourse like this, fall not into what I have hitherto, with so much reverence, seen you, upon all occasions, superiour to, subterfuge and evasion! Be yourself, Harleigh!—what can you be more noble? and plainly, simply let me into the cause, since you cannot conceal from me the effect. Speak, then! Is it but in the sullen majesty of masculine superiority,
'Lord of yourself, uncumber'd by a wife,'[8]
that you fly all marriage-bonds, with insulated, haughty singleness? or is it that, deceived by my apparent engagement, your heart never asked itself the worth of mine, till already all its own pulsations beat for another object?'
Harleigh tried to smile, tried to rally, tried to divert the question; all in vain; Elinor became but more urgent, and more disordered. 'O Harleigh!' she cried, 'is it too much to ask this one mark of your confidence, for a creature who has cast her whole destiny at your feet? Speak!—if you would not devote me to distraction! Speak!—if you would not consign me to immediate delirium!'
'And what,' cried he, trembling at her vehemence, 'would you have me say?'