“You think,” she said, “I could take courage and come to you and be your everyday wife—while you work and are poor?”
“Why not?” said I.
She looked at me gravely, with extended finger. “Do you really think that—of me? Haven’t you seen me—all?”
I hesitated.
“Never once have I really meant marrying you,” she insisted. “Never once. I fell in love with you from the first. But when you seemed a successful man, I told myself I wouldn’t. I was love-sick for you, and you were so stupid, I came near it then. But I knew I wasn’t good enough. What could I have been to you? A woman with bad habits and bad associations, a woman smirched. And what could I do for you or be to you? If I wasn’t good enough to be a rich man’s wife, I’m certainly not good enough to be a poor one’s. Forgive me for talking sense to you now, but I wanted to tell you this somehow.”
She stopped at my gesture. I sat up, and the canoe rocked with my movement.
“I don’t care,” I said. “I want to marry you and make you my wife!”
“No,” she said, “don’t spoil things. That is impossible!”
“Impossible!”
“Think! I can’t do my own hair! Do you mean you will get me a maid?”