“Better than my own life?”
“Yes, Barney. Oh, yes,” she replied with a little sob in her voice.
“Now we will speak simple truth to each other,” said Barney in a tone solemn as if in prayer, “the truth as in God's sight.”
She hesitated. “Oh, Barney!” she cried piteously, “must I say all the truth?”
“We must, darling. You promise?”
“Oh-h-h! Yes, I promise.” She flung her arms upward about his neck. “I know what you will ask.”
“Listen to me, darling,” he said again, taking down her arms, “this is what I would say. You have marked out your life. You will follow your great ambition. Your glorious voice calls you and you feel you must go. You love me and you would be my wife, make my home, mother my children if God should send them to us; but both these things you cannot do, and meantime you have chosen your great career. Is not this true?”
“I can't give you up, Barney!” she moaned.
To neither of them did it occur as an alternative that Barney should give up his life's work to accompany her in the path she had marked. Equally to both this would have seemed unworthy of him.
“Is not this true, Iola?” Barney's voice, in spite of him, grew a little stern. And though she knew it was at the cost of life she could not deny it.