"I have promised to marry Joseph."
He did not speak or move, but continued to stand leaning against the lintel of the doorway, looking down on her. The colour was fading from the west leaving it ashen white. And so standing in the dying radiance, he saw the long bright day of his young hope come to its close; he drained to its dregs his cup of bitterness she had prepared for him; learned his first lesson in the victory of little things over the larger purposes of life, over the nobler planning; bit the dust of the heart's first defeat and tragedy.
She had caught up the iron shears in her nervousness and begun to cut the flaxen thread; and in the silence of the room only the rusty click was now heard as she clipped it, clipped it, clipped it.
Then such a greater trembling seized her that she laid the shears back upon the table. Still he did not move or speak, and there seemed to fall upon her conscience—in insupportable burden until, as if by no will of her own, she spoke again pitifully:
"I didn't know that you cared so much for me. It isn't my fault. You had never asked me, and he had already asked me twice." He changed his position quickly so that the last light coming in through the window could no longer betray his face. All at once his voice broke through the darkness, so unlike itself that she started:
"When did you give him this promise? I have no right to ask . . . when did you give him this promise?"
She answered as if by no will of her own:"The night of the ball—as we were going home."
She waited until she felt that she should sink to the ground.
Then he spoke again as if rather to himself than to her, and with the deepest sorrow and pity for them both:
"If I had gone with you that night—if I had gone with you that night—and had asked you—you would have married me."