He sighed, for he was fighting a battle with himself, and the battle was reflected in his face.
“Listen,” she went on. “Remember that you and I are no longer children, and that we are not jesting, and that the matter may affect our whole lives. Inquire sternly of your conscience, therefore, and tell me (for I know you, as well as trust you) whether you can stand by me your life long, and be to me all that I need? You know me as I know you: consequently you understand what it is that I am trying to say. Should you return me a bold, a considered ‘Yes,’ I will cancel a certain decision of mine—I will give you my hand, and together we will go abroad, or to your estate, or to the Veaborg Quarter.”
“Ah, if you knew how much I love you!” he began.
“I desire no protestations of love.—only a brief answer.”
“Do not torture me, Olga,” he cried with weariness in his tone.
“Then am I right in what I suppose?” she asked.
“Yes—you are right,” was the firm, but significant, reply.
There followed a long pause.
“Shall I tell you what you would have done had we married?” at length she said. “Day by day you would have relapsed farther and farther into your slough. And I? You see what I am—that I am not yet grown old, and that I shall never cease to live. But you would have taken to waiting for Christmas, and then for Shrovetide, and to attending evening parties, and to dancing, and to thinking of nothing at all. You would have retired to rest each night with a sigh of thankfulness that the day had passed so quickly; and each morning you would have awakened with a prayer that to-day might be exactly as yesterday. That would have been our future. Is it not so? Meanwhile I should have been fading away. Do you really think that in such a life you would have been happy?”
He tried to rise and leave the room, but his feet refused their office. He tried to say something, but his throat seemed dry, and no sound would come. All he could do was to stretch out his hand.