I could hardly restrain my voice from betraying a certain triumph which I felt at this sign of imperfection in his love.
“If you hold it a weakness,” said I, “there is a point at last in which we differ. If it be a weakness, then it is one which, up to two years ago, I had scarce dared hope to attain. Few, indeed, are the women, and as few men, strong enough for the full knowledge of love.”
“Yet the greatest love is not the whole of life,” he averred disputatiously.
“You speak but coldly,” said I, “for the lover of Mademoiselle de Lamourie.”
He started. I had stung him. “I am of the Society of Friends—a Quaker!” said he harshly. “I do not fight. I lift not my hand against my fellow-man. Yet did I believe that you would succeed in winning her love, I think I would kill you where you stand!”
I liked the sharp lines of his face as he said it, fronting me with eyes grown suddenly cruel. I felt that he meant it, for the moment at least.
“Say, rather,” said I, smiling, “that you would honestly try your best to kill me. It would be an interesting experiment. Well, now we understand each other. I will honestly try my best to do you what will be, in my eyes, the sorest injury in the world. But I will try by fair means only, and if I fail I will bear you no grudge. In all else, however, believe that I do greatly desire your welfare, and will seize with eagerness any occasion of doing you a service. You are perhaps less unworthy of Mademoiselle de Lamourie than I am, save that you cannot love her so well. And now,” I added with a smile, “will you take my hand?”
As I held it out to him he at first drew back and seemed disposed to repulse me. Then his face cleared.
“You are honest!” he exclaimed, and wrung my hand with great cordiality. “I rather like you—and I am very sorry for you. I have her promise.”
“Well,” said I, “if also you have her love you are the most fortunate man on God’s earth!”