"Certainly: I wonder you ask, Roger."
He walked up and down a few times and then took a seat beside me.
"Let us look at this matter in a common-sense way, Virginia. Heaven knows I love you, and that I am as romantic in my feelings as any one could desire. But suppose we were to marry without your father's consent, what would be the result? We should starve. To speak frankly, I find it difficult enough to make both ends meet as a single man. You are used to every luxury and comfort, and have not been accustomed to economize. Do not misunderstand me, Virginia," he continued, speaking quickly, struck perhaps by my expression, which if my emotions were adequately reflected therein must have made him uneasy. "I know that you are capable of any sacrifice; it is I who am unwilling to permit you to give up your fortune and your family for my sake. If there were any chance of your father's relenting, if I thought there was a possibility that time would make a difference in his views, I would not speak so. But as it is, I see no alternative for us but an unsuccessful struggle with poverty, that would end in unhappiness. It breaks my heart to come to this conclusion, but justice to you, as well as common-sense, will not let me suffer you to commit a folly which after the glamour of the moment was over, you would regret."
It was the manner even more than the matter of his speech that stabbed me to the heart. Had he spoken less calmly and deliberately, I might have believed that he shrank from accepting my self-sacrifice, and have regarded his dampening words as a mere cloak for his own generosity. But his unconcerned and dispassionate air left no doubt in my mind that it was he who was unwilling to face the romantic but desperate circumstances in which my father's decree had placed us. Instinct told me that he in whose constancy and in whose devotion to ideality I had believed with all the ardor and trust of which I was capable, was false, and ready to subordinate a love like ours to temporal considerations.
Yet with the persistence of one who clutches at any semblance of hope however slender, I refused to believe the truth without further evidence.
"I should not be a burden to you, Roger. People can live on much less than they suppose. We could both work, I as well as you."
He shrugged his shoulders, and taking both my hands in his looked into my face with a trivial smile, so little in accord with the intensity of my feelings that I almost shrieked with pain.
"Do you think I would allow my dear girl to demean herself in any such way as that? No, no! Love in a cottage is a delightful theory, but put into practice it becomes terribly disappointing."
I drew away my hands from him and sat for some moments in silence.
"I think it is best that our engagement should come to an end," I said presently.