His voice had kept at the same high-pitched abrupt tone, as if he were speaking under the pang of some physical anguish. Faith was frightened by it, but her mother had told her to pluck up spirit, and she thought, like other women, that a show of anger might bring David to her way of thinking. So she turned half away from him, as he saw very well by the dim light, and said, throwing her apron over her arm,—
“That’s all fine enough, but I don’t see as how you’re more bound to them than to me, after the things you’ve said, and the neighbours knowing and all. It would have been better if I’d minded grandfather’s words, and Mis’ess told me neither she nor Mr Anthony was pleased to think of me marrying a man that sets himself up against the Church.”
Faith delivered this speech with considerable energy, but there were tears in her eyes which it was well for David’s resolution that he could not see. Her mention of Mr Anthony stung him sharply. He said in a compressed tone,—
“You will not listen to him? There’s no man in the county has done so much against the good cause, and may God forgive him, for he needs forgiveness!”
Since he had kept silence about the letter all Anthony’s deeds had grown blacker in his eyes, and he thought, with the strange self-deception which men permit themselves to weave, that the obloquy that had fallen upon the young man was but a just retribution for those acts for which he had now professed to ask forgiveness. Faith, who had been silently crying for a few moments, found her voice to continue in the same tone, which she thought had produced a little impression,—
“I’ve stuck to you faithful, for all I’ve had to bear from every one. And this is what I get—” she added, breaking down altogether into sobs at last.
“It’s a heavy burden,” said David, drawing a quick deep breath; “the worse for me, because I should have spared you, and ought never to have told you how I loved you. But with the light that’s been given to me, I dare not follow my own weak heart, unless—unless—” he went on, in a voice that trembled as a woman’s might have done.
“Well, unless—?” said Faith, looking up.
“You couldn’t bear such a life as mine must be?” said David, speaking slowly, and as it were out of a strange silence. “Poverty and hardship, and men’s bitter persecutions, and only me faithful by your side? You couldn’t bear that, my dear, could you?”
The words were so tender, so wistful, that for an instant Faith hesitated. But her love was not strong enough either to cast an ideal light over the life he thus unfolded before her, or to enable her to face its endurance for his sake. Instead of giving him a direct answer, she said with a touch of anger,—