“Yet I can only take what I can absorb or receive into my being. The qualities of a human soul are too mighty to be absorbed by any one.”
“What matters it if I am content in your love that I wish for none other?”
“I have often feared, dear Alice, that your individual life was lost in your love for me.”
“What matters it, if you give me yourself in return?”
“It matters much. If we are not strong for ourselves, we are not strength to each other. If we have no reserve force, we shall in time consume each other's life. We can never be wholly another's.”
“Am I not wholly yours, dear Hugh?” she said, raising her eyes tenderly to his, in that summer twilight.
“Not all mine, but all that I can receive.”
“It may be true, but it seems cold to me,” she replied, a little sadly.
“Too much philosophy and not enough love for your tender woman nature, is it not, darling?”
“I think you have explained it. I feel as though you were drifting away from me, Hugh, when you talk as you do to-night. Although I dearly love progress and enlarged views of life, I do not like many of the questions that are being agitated in reference to marriage.”