“And you don’t want to wed me?”
“No.”
“Then I’d best be goin’,” said Nat.
He took up his hat and walked as far as the door. “Ha’ you counted the money—are you sure as it’s all right?” called Jill after him.
“’Course it’s all right; what matters the money? You go and break a chap’s ’eart, and you talk to him o’ money. You send a chap right away to the devil, and you talk to him o’ money. What’s money to me to-day! I say, curse all women, curse goodness. I say—oh, Jill, Jill, you don’t mean it. It’s a trick you’re playing on me. Jill, my little love, my little sweet-heart, come back to me—come back.”
Nat’s voice was broken. He flung his hat on the floor, and, rushing up to the young girl, clasped her tightly in a passionate embrace.
For just a quarter of a minute she yielded to it. She felt the strength of the arms she loved. She said to herself:
“I can’t go on. Even for mother’s sake, I can’t go on with this.”
But then the remembrance of Nat’s words of the night before, the remembrance of that cruel creed of his, which only believed in honesty, sobriety, and truth, came back like a cold wave to turn aside the warm impulses of nature.
“No, Nat,” she said, detaching herself from him, “you must believe wot I say. We ha’ got to part. I did think as I loved yer, and it did seem nice and beautiful to me, the thought of living with yer—but you’re too high—too high for the likes o’ Jill. Ef you wedded me, you’d turn bitter agen me, for I ain’t what you think; I must ha’ my fling. May be I don’t think them things wrong that you hold by. Wot’s a lie now and then, if it serves a good purpose, and wot’s jest not being too perticler ’bout change, and returning all the pennies you get, and selling withered flowers for fresh! There’s a lot of fuss made by some folks about that sort of thing—I know what you thinks; but I call that sort of thing soft. Poor folks has got to live, and they can’t be over perticler. And then, Nat—you holds a deal on to sobriety—mother, she has a horror even o’ a drop o’ beer; but me, when I’m werry tired, it’s comfortin’. I don’t go for to deny that it’s werry comfortin’. Wot’s the matter, Nat? How white you ha’ got. I’m up to the average gel, ain’t I, Nat? I’m not all white like an angel; but I ain’t black neither, am I, Nat?”