‘Right, yes! I say you were right, at least. What if you had gone to England without coming? What if I had never known—oh, Jerome, it is horrible to think of!’
‘For me! I feel that I came to you a beggar, and that I sit here a king, and with more than a king’s riches. I cannot repent.’
‘Did you think there was something wrong in it?’ she asked, anxiously.
‘Wrong, no! Is it wrong to love the sun, and to go by preference where he shines? What I felt to be wrong was my coming to monopolise you—if I could persuade you to be monopolised by me—just when I have the least right to do so—when I can only say, “I love you, and always shall love you,” but cannot say, “Come and be my wife at once.”’
‘Knowing that you love me, I can wait,’ she answered. ‘Surely, the highest and best kind of love is that which sustains us through waiting and trouble—not that hideous parody of love which must not be spoken unless the lover can say at one and the same time, “I love you—I have got a house for you, and enough money to keep you—will you marry me?”’
‘Rampant philistinism!’ said Jerome. ‘I had no idea before, that I had so much of it in me. You read me a lesson.’
‘I will never believe but that your love is of a different fibre to that, Jerome. Never reproach yourself with having stolen a march upon me; but think rather that you have done a good deed in giving me the right not only to share all your hopes and fears, but to say that I share them, and to own to you that your joy is my joy, and your sorrow my sorrow.’
He had not seen the case in that aspect before, but he did not say so. The incense she burnt before him, of love and a subtle flattery, was sweet. It intoxicated him. From his education and surroundings, he was incapable of telling himself that he was ‘taking pity’ on any woman. No vulgar parade of the love she felt for him was possible; but at the same time his most intense consciousness at this moment was, not that a proud, and noble, and good, and beautiful woman had given her happiness into his keeping, but that he had been right, she had loved him—he could bend her to his will.
Sara broke the pause which ensued by suddenly asking:
‘Where is your sister? Tell me about her. What is she going to do while you are settling all your difficulties at home?’