“And a gentleman, as well as a man,” she added with a gracious smile. “In fact, sir, if you were less agreeable, I might love you; but as it is, I like you and enjoy your society much too well for that. I would rather hate you than love you: and as for marrying you—pardon me for being the first to speak the word, but widows have privileges—I would rather love you and have you jilt me!”
There was a certain delicate comicality in Perdita’s way of saying this, which, though it implied no slight to Fillmore, was more disheartening than the most emphatic and serious “No” would have been.
“I had been flattering myself with the idea that you looked upon me more as if I were a man than a woman,” she continued. “Any one can fall in love with a pretty woman; and there is less distinction in being loved by a man like you, than in having you treat me as a friend and an equal—if you would do that!”
“You are the only woman who has ever been a woman for me,” replied Fillmore, with passion. “The love both of my youth and of my manhood is yours. I will do anything to win you, I will never give you up.”
“Oh, I can easily make you give me up,” said Perdita with a sigh.
“How?”
“By letting you know me better.”
“You do not know me!” he exclaimed.
“I shall always love some one else better than you.”
“Who?” demanded he, turning pale.