“Gervase, I know—I feel sure you’re only doing this because of her.”
“Well, I can’t show you now that you’re wrong, but I hope time will.”
“I hope it won’t show you that you’re wrong—when it’s too late. My dear——” she went up to him and put her hands on his shoulders—“My dear, you’re so young.”
“Don’t, Jen.”
“But it’s true. Why can’t you wait till you’ve seen more of life—till you’ve lived, in fact?”
“Because I don’t want to give God just the fag-end of myself, the leavings of what you call life. I want to give Him the best I’ve got—all my best years.”
“If Stella had accepted you, you would have married her, and we shouldn’t have heard anything about all this.”
“That’s true. But she refused me, and it was her refusal which showed me the life I was meant for. The fact that I loved Stella, and she would not have me, showed me that God does not want me to marry.”
He seemed to Jenny transparent and rather silly, like a child.
“But you’re only twenty-one,” she persisted gently, as she would with a child. “You’d have been sure to fall in love again and marry someone else.”