She paused, breathless.
“Doesn’t that prove what I say?” he said, bending toward her. “She loves you far better than herself. She wants your happiness.”
“Could that mean hers?” she demanded, her bosom heaving. “To see us together—always—always! To be reminded in everything—the lines of your face—the tones of your voice, maybe,—of that! Oh, you don’t know how women feel—how they remember—how they grieve! I’ve gone over all you can say till my soul cries out, but it can’t change it. It can’t!”
Valiant felt as though he were battering with bruised knuckles at a stone wall. A helpless anger simmered in him. “Suppose,” he said bitterly, “that your mother one day, perhaps after long years, learns of your sacrifice. She is likely to guess in the end, I think. Will it add to her pleasure, do you fancy, to discover that out of this conception of filial loyalty—for it’s that, I suppose!—you have spoiled your own life?”
She shuddered. “She will never learn,” she said brokenly. “Oh, I know she would not have spoken. She would suffer anything for my happiness. But I wouldn’t have her bear any more for my sake.”
His anger faded suddenly, and when he looked at her again, tears were burning in his eyes.
“Shirley!” he said. “It’s my heart, too, that you are binding on the wheel! I love you. I want nothing but you! I’d rather beg my bread from door to door with your hand in mine than sit on a throne without you! What can there be in life for me unless you share it? Think of our love! Think of the fate that brought me here to find you in Virginia! Think of our garden—where I thought we would live and work and dream, till we were old and gray—together, darling! Don’t throw our love away like this!”
His entreaties left her only whiter, but unmoved. She shook her head, gazing at him through great clear tears that welled over and rolled down her cheeks.
“I can’t fight,” she said. “I have no strength left.” She put out her hand as she spoke and dropped it with a little limp gesture that had in it tired despair, finality and hopelessness. It caught at his heart more strongly than any words. He felt a warm gush of pity and tenderness.
He took her hand gently without speaking, and pressed it hard against his lips. It seemed to him very small and cold.