"No," said Nina, after a few moments' silence, "not in sport, certainly; but, yet, not enough in earnest. I think I am about half waked up. I don't know myself. I don't know where or what I am, and I want to go back into that thoughtless dream. I do really think it's too hard to take up the responsibility of living in good earnest. Now, it seems to me just this,—that I cannot be bound to anybody. I want to be free. I have positively broken all connection with Mr. Carson; I have broken with another one, and I wish"—
"To break with me?" said Clayton.
"I don't really know as I can say what I do wish. It is a very different thing from any of the others, but there's a feeling of dread, and responsibility, and constraint, about it; and, though I think I should feel very lonesome now without you, and though I like to get your letters, yet it seems to me that I cannot be engaged,—that is a most dreadful feeling to me."
"My dear friend," said Clayton, "if that is all, make yourself easy. There's no occasion for our being engaged. If you can enjoy being with me and writing to me, why, do it in the freest way, and to-morrow shall take care for the things of itself. You shall say what you please, do what you please, write when you please, and not write when you please, and have as many or as few letters as you like. There can be no true love without liberty."
"Oh, I'm sure I'm much obliged to you!" said Nina, with a sigh of relief. "And, now, do you know, I like your sister's postscript very much; but I can't tell what it is in it, for the language is as kind as can be, that would give me the impression that she is one of those very proper kind of people, that would be dreadfully shocked if she knew of all my goings on in New York."
Clayton could hardly help laughing at the instinctive sagacity of this remark.
"I'm sure I don't know," said he, "where you could have seen that,—in so short a postscript, too."
"Do you know, I never take anybody's handwriting into my hand, that I don't feel an idea of them come over me, just as you have when you see people? And that idea came over me when I read your sister's letter."
"Well, Nina, to tell you the truth, sister Anne is a little bit conventional—a little set in her ways; but, after all, a large-hearted, warm-hearted woman. You would like each other, I know."