“Not even if I wish it very much?”
“No.”
“If you are thinking of my future—”
“I'm thinking for both of us. And although just now you think you care a little for me, you do not care enough, Peter. You are lonely and I am the only person you see much, so you think you want to marry me. You don't really. You want to help me.”
Few motives are unmixed. Poor Peter, thus accused, could not deny his altruism.
And in the face of his poverty and the little he could offer, compared with what she must lose, he did not urge what was the compelling motive after all, his need of her.
“It would be a rotten match for you,” he agreed. “I only thought, perhaps—You are right, of course; you ought not to marry.”
“And what about you?”
“I ought not, of course.”
Harmony rose, smiling a little.