“Well, why don't you go on? Finish what you've got to say?”

“I don't know that I have any thing more to say.”

“Any thing more! You haven't said any thing at all, as yet.”

“Well, then, I don't know that I have any thing at all to say.”

“Good God!” Elias broke out furiously. “You—you'll—what is the matter with you, any how? I tell you that I am going to marry a Christian; and you—you sit there—like—like I don't know what—and answer that you have nothing to say about it!”

“Precisely; because, indeed, I have nothing to say about it—except this, that the marriage will never take place. That's all.”

“Never take place! I give it up. What in reason's name do you mean?”

“I mean what I say.”

“That we—she and I—are—are not going to get married, after all?”

“Yes.”