"To be the charm of his home, and the delight of his heart and eyes," replied Cornelius, in a voice full of love, fondness, and sorrow. "To be to him all that you have been, and never more can be to me. I knew not how to value you formerly; and now that you have become all I could imagine, I am not allowed to possess you in peace! Scarcely have I recovered from the dread of seeing you throw yourself away on a mere boy, scarcely do I deem myself secure, when peril comes from the quarter whence I least feared it, and I am despoiled of my heart's best treasure."
"If you liked me," I said, in a low tone, "you would not, because you could not give me up."
"If I liked you!" began Cornelius, but he said no more.
"Yes, if you liked me!" I exclaimed in all the passion of my woe; "if you liked me, Cornelius, you would feel what I feel—that such a separation is like death. Tell me that your art requires your absence, I can bear it; tell me that you are too poor to keep me, that I must go, and earn my bread amongst strangers, and I shall bear that, too; for I shall look to a happy future, and a blessed reunion. But this—this, Cornelius, my very heart shrinks from it. I feel that you are to follow one path; and that, though my very being clings to you and Kate, I must tread in another, and see you both for ever receding from before my aching eyes. I am not yet eighteen, Cornelius, and I am so happy! I cannot afford to waste my youth, and throw away my happiness; and if you cared for me, would you not feel so, too?"
I spoke with involuntary reproach.
"Oh, Daisy!" he exclaimed so scornfully that I immediately repented, "you think me indifferent, because, not to add to your grief, I am silent on mine. You speak of your sorrow; you do not ask yourself what will be to me the cost of this separation. How shall I return alone to the home we left together this morning? What shall I say to Kate—to Kate who reared you—when she asks me for her child'? Why here am I actually giving up to a total stranger, the very thing I most long to keep; here am I taking you from my home, and leading you to the home of another; here am I placing you in the very circumstances that are likely to make me lose you for ever. You are young, Daisy, very young. You will be flattered, caressed, seduced out of old affections, almost unconsciously; and I shall not be there to guard my rights. I know that absence, time, the world will conspire to efface me from your heart; I know it, and yet I accept this."
"But why so?" I asked; "why so?"
"Because," he replied, with a fixed look, and compressed lips, "because to keep even you, Daisy, with the sense of my own engrossing selfishness, violated honour and trust betrayed upon me, would be gall and wormwood to my soul."
"But it is not you who keep me, Cornelius, if it is I who insist on remaining; if I disobey you, brave your authority, say you had no right to pledge yourself for me, and that, whether you like it or not, I will stay with Kate, what can you do then?"
His colour came and went; he turned upon me a strange, troubled look; his lip quivered; he took my hand in his, and almost crushed it, then dropped it as if it were fire.