“We should be sitting at your Grandmother’s tea-table, and waiting till someone arranged our betrothal. Why dream of these impossible things. Your Grandmother would not give you to me.”
“She would. She does what I wish. That is not the hindrance.”
“You are starting on this endless polemic again, Vera. We are meeting for the last time, as you determined we should. Let us make an end of this torture.”
“I took an oath never to come here again.”
“Meanwhile, the time is precious. We are parting for ever, if stupidity commands, if your Grandmother’s antiquated convictions separate us. I leave here a week from now. As you know the document assuring my freedom has arrived. Let us be together, and not be separated again.”
“Never?”
“Never!” he repeated angrily, with a gesture of impatience. “What lying words those are, ‘never’ and ‘always.’ Of course ‘never.’ Does not a year, perhaps two, three years, mean never? You want a never ending tenderness. Does such a thing exist?”
“Enough, Mark! I have heard enough of this temporary affection. Ah! I am very unhappy. The separation from you is not the only cloud over my soul. For a year now I have been hiding myself from my Grandmother, which oppresses me, and her still more. I hoped that in these days my trouble would end; we should put our thoughts, our hopes, our intentions on a clear footing. Then I would go to Grandmother and say: ‘This is what I have chosen for my whole life.’ But it is not to be, and we are to part?” she asked sadly.
“If I conceived myself to be an angel,” said Mark, “I might say ‘for our whole lives,’ and you would be justified. That gray-headed dreamer, Raisky, also thinks that women are created for a higher purpose.”
“They are created above all for the family. They are not angels, neither are they, most certainly, mere animals. I am no wolf’s mate, Mark, but a woman.”