"Yes, yes, you are; and that is the strange and wonderful part of it all. I love and adore you, in spite of theory and principle and the judgment of wise men. But I defy their laughter and their sneers, for I can point to you and say, 'Show me her match among the daughters of the proud and wealthy. She is the peer of any.' I disbelieved in the power of Nature to imitate the excellence of woman, and I am punished for my lack of faith. And how sweet and exquisite the punishment, if only, Alice, you will tell me that my prayer is granted, and that you will be my wife."
"Ah! but I should only be a burden to you. I can bring you nothing, not even an untarnished name, for though you see me as I am, you do not know what others whose blood is in my veins have done."
"What is that to me?" he cried fiercely; "it is you that I love!"
"But you are striving to become rich. It is your ambition. Have you not told me so? Money is the greatest power on earth. You said that, too."
"And it was a lie. I had never loved. What is money to me now? But, no, I am wrong. It is my ambition, and without your sympathy and affection I shall never attain it."
He gazed at me imploringly, and yet though my eyes were overflowing with tears in the fulness of my new-found happiness, I still shook my head.
"Listen to me, Mr. Prime," I said quietly, after a short silence between us. "I am very grateful to you—how could I be otherwise?—for what you have said to me. Yours were the sweetest and most precious words to which I ever listened. You have asked me to become your wife, because you loved me for myself alone: that I can be sure of, since I have nothing but myself to bring you. It makes me more happy than I dare think of; but in spite of all you have said to me, I cannot accept your sacrifice. I cannot consent to mar your hopes for the future with all I lack. You think you love me now, and I believe you; but the time might come when you would see that you had made a mistake, and that would kill me. I am not of your opinion as to the power of Nature to imitate the excellence of woman. You were right at first. Ladies are born, not made; and were you to marry in the station of life in which you see me, the scales would some day drop from your eyes, and you would know that you had been deceived by love. No, Mr. Prime, I should not be worthy to become your wife were I to accept your offer. The difference between us is too great, and the banker and his hired female clerk will never be on an equality to the end of the world. I am sorry—ah, so sorry!—to wound you thus, but I cannot permit you to throw your life away."
"Then you do not love me?" he asked, with a piteous cry.
"Love you?" I gave a little joyous laugh before I said, "I shall never love any one else in the world."
It would take too long to repeat the efforts Mr. Prime made to lead me to reconsider my resolution. Meanwhile I was racking my brains to find a way of letting matters rest without depriving him utterly of hope. As he said, the knowledge that my heart was his only increased the bitterness of his despair. Happy as I was, I felt bewildered and uncertain. I shrank instinctively from revealing my identity at once. I wanted time to think. I scarcely knew the character of my own emotions. At one moment I blushed with a sense of the web of deceit that I had wound about him, and at another with the joyful consciousness of our mutual love. What would he say when the truth was made known to him? Ah! but he loves me for myself alone, was the answering thought.