"Yes, to me, in Bermuda," he answers, firmly. "Perhaps you think that it was only because I looked upon you as my own, my property, that I took so great an interest in you: it was not as mine, it was as yourself, that I cared about you. You are yourself still, though you are not nor ever will be mine."
Then, like Guinevere's, "his voice brake suddenly."
"Then, as a stream, that spouting from a cliff
Fails in mid-air, but gathering at the base,
Remakes itself and flashes down the vale,
Went on in passionate utterance."
"Essie! they say that women are more capable of self-sacrifice than men. Prove it to me now! Sacrifice this pride of yours; consent to the one thing that would make me leave England with almost a light, instead of such a heavy heart!"
She is silent for a minute or two, halting between two opinions; hesitating, struggling with herself: then she speaks, rapidly, but not easily—
"I cannot, Bob—I cannot! Ask me anything, not quite so hard, and I'll do it! Just think how young I am, seventeen last birthday, I have probably forty or fifty more years to live; do you wish me to promise to be a pensioner for half a century on your mother's charity?"
He does not answer.
"Don't be angry with me for having a little self-respect!" she cries, passionately, snatching his hand. "I will go and stay with your people till I have found something to do, if they will have me. I will get your mother to help me in looking for work; I will take her advice in everything, do whatever she tells me; I will do anything—anything in life to please you, except——"
"Except the one thing I wish," he answers, sadly and coldly.
"If you speak in that tone I shall have to promise you anything," she says, despairingly; "but it will only be perjury, for I shall infallibly break my promise again. Why should not I work?" she goes on, in a sort of indignation at his silence. "Am I a cripple, or an idiot? Let me wait till I am either the one or the other, before I come upon the parish!" she says, with the bitter pride of poverty; "at all events, let us call things by their right names."