‘Stop, stop!’ he said sharply; ‘you must not say so.’
‘I will say it, I must say it,’ she cried, her voice vibrating with the intensity of her feeling. ‘I know you do not need me; you have your work, your miners, your plans; you need no one; you are strong. But,’ and her voice rose to a cry, ‘I am not strong by myself; you have made me strong. I came here a foolish girl, foolish and selfish and narrow. God sent me grief. Three years ago my heart died. Now I am living again. I am a woman now, no longer a girl. You have done this for me. Your life, your words, yourself—you have showed me a better, a higher life, than I had ever known before, and now you send me away.’
She paused abruptly.
‘Blind, stupid fool!’ I said to myself.
He held himself resolutely in hand, answering carefully, but his voice had lost its coldness and was sweet and kind.
‘Have I done this for you? Then surely God has been good to me. And you have helped me more than any words could tell you.’
‘Helped!’ she repeated scornfully.
‘Yes, helped,’ he answered, wondering at her scorn.
‘You can do without my help,’ she went on. ‘You make people help you. You will get many to help you; but I need help, too.’ She was standing before him with her hands tightly clasped; her face was pale, and her eyes deeper than ever. He sat looking up at her in a kind of maze as she poured out her words hot and fast.
‘I am not thinking of you.’ His coldness had hurt her deeply. ‘I am selfish; I am thinking of myself. How shall I do? I have grown to depend on you, to look to you. It is nothing to you that I go, but to me—’ She did not dare to finish.