Sec.
Me? You still love me? Clara, I suspected it when I saw you outside in the garden.
Clara.
Did you? He did, too. (Dully, as if alone.) He stood before me. He or I? Oh, my heart, my cursed heart! To prove to him and to myself that it wasn’t so, or to crush it if it were so, I did what I now——(bursting into tears). O God in Heaven, I would have pity if I were thou and thou wert I!
Sec.
Clara, be my wife! I came to you to look you in the eyes in the old way. If you had not understood my look, I would have gone away and said nothing. Now I offer you all that I am and all that I have. It’s little, but it can grow. I’d have been here long ago, only your mother was ill—and then she died. (Clara laughs madly.) Have courage, girl! You gave him your word. Is that on your mind? And I must say it’s a devil of a nuisance. How could you——?
Clara.
Oh! Go on asking me how things combine to drive a poor girl mad! Sneers and mockery on all sides when you had gone to college and never wrote. “She’s thinking about him.” “She thinks his fun was meant seriously.” “Does she get letters from him?” And then mother: “Stick to your equals.” “Pride goes before a fall.” “Leonard’s a fine young man; everybody is surprised that you turn your back on him.” And then my own heart: “If he’s forgotten you, show him that you too——” O God!
Sec.
I am to blame, I know. Well, what’s hard is not therefore impossible. I’ll get you free. Perhaps——