“Not offended. Offence could hardly dome between us. But don’t you see, we should not be happy together, we could not marry.”
“You could not be happy with me. That is what I must understand you to mean,” he said with some bitterness. “And I don’t know what I have done that you should change your opinion, if, indeed, you ever loved me.”
If she ever loved him! What but love, tender and true, could have nerved her to the anguish of this moment, of all the moments that were coming! Not love him! She sighed, she had not thought her task would be so hard.
“We all make mistakes at times,” she said, without answering his reproach, which, indeed, pricked his own conscience as he uttered it. “Let us be thankful, Jack, that this isn’t irreparable.”
“But why—why will you have it to be a mistake?” he asked doggedly.
“I leave that to you to answer,” she said gravely, and he suddenly felt in her a womanly dignity of which he had not before been conscious. “I don’t myself think that any good is to be gained by entering into explanations. You know in your heart that what I say is best for us both.”
“I know nothing of the sort,” he exclaimed; and indeed at this moment he would not acknowledge to himself that it was best. He had not wished to hurry on their marriage, but that was a different matter from giving up Phillis. And he could not help feeling that it was possible she might carry out her determination. But yesterday he would have smiled at the idea that he could not influence her in any direction he pleased. He had never understood her, and shyness had seemed to him such a marked feature in her character, that he had looked upon her as one who would be always willing to follow where others led, without attempting to exercise an independent judgment. In her words to-day, still more perhaps in her manner, there was a quiet resolution which for ever upset these preconceived ideas. This was no shy unformed girl, but a woman strong in her self-respect and self-control. “Phillis,” he said, and there was greater warmth in his tone than he had ever shown her before, “for pity’s sake don’t let a vague fancy separate us. If you say nothing definite, how can I defend myself?”
He half expected her to answer that she did not accuse him; but she did not, although she seemed to ponder over his words.
“It is not a vague fancy,” she said presently, and she spoke very quietly and sadly; “it is a conviction, which you will by-and-by acknowledge yourself.”
“But—it is impossible—you don’t really mean that it is all over between us? What reason can we give the Leytons—my uncle?”