“She would love me; she would give herself to me. I cannot offend her. This alone is my happiness. This only is life. What matters all else?”
And I was about to give way. If I had so much as looked in her face, or met her eyes, I must have fallen from my intent.
But I called to mind the path by which I had been led, the oath that had been laid upon me to speak faithfully. The lonely way of a man—a sinful man trying to do the right—gripped me like a vice, and compelled me against my will.
“Mary,” I said, solemnly, “I love you more than life—more, perchance, than I love God. But I cannot lay aside, nor yet shut out the doing of my duty.”
She thrust her hand out suddenly, passionately, from her, as if casting me out of her sight for ever. She set her kerchief to her eyes.
“You have chosen!” she cried. “Go, then!”
“Mary,” I said, turning to follow her.
All suddenly she turned upon me and stamped her foot.
“I dare you to speak with me!” she cried, her eyes flashing with anger. “I thought you were a man, and you are no better than a machine. You love! You know not the A B C of it. You have never passed the hornbook. I doubt not that you broke that poor lassie’s heart down there in the farm by the water-side. She loved a stone and she died. Now you tell me that you love me, and the first thing I ask of you you refuse, though it is for my own father, and I entreat you with tears!”
“Mary,” I began to say quietly, “you do me great wrong. Let me tell you——”