“Perhaps we have neither of us considered the relation quite enough?” she said.
“I am not sure that we have.” And again, “I am not sure, Mary, that we have,” he repeated more soberly.
She knew what he meant now—knew what was in his mind almost as clearly as if, instead of grasping his conclusion, she had been a party to his reasons. And she closed her lips, a spot of color in each cheek. In other circumstances she would have taken on herself a full, nay, the main share, of the blame. She would have been quick to admit that she, too, had made a mistake, and that no harm was done.
But his manner opened her eyes to many things that had been a puzzle to her. Thought is swift, and in a flash her mind had travelled over the whole course of their engagement, had recalled his long absence, the chill of his letters, the infrequency of his visits; and she saw by that light that this was no sudden shift, but an occasion sought and seized. Therefore she would not help him. She at least had been honest, she at least had been in earnest. She had tricked, not him only, but herself!
She closed her lips and waited, therefore. And he, knowing that he had now burned his boats, had to go on. “I am not sure that we did think enough about it?” he said doggedly. “I have suspected for some time that I acted hastily in—in asking you to be my wife, Mary.”
“Indeed?” she said.
“Yes. And what has happened to-day, proving that we look at things so differently, has confirmed my suspicion. It has convinced me—” he looked down at his table, avoiding her eyes, but continued firmly—“that we are not suited to one another. The wife of a man, placed as I am, should have an idea of values, a certain reserve, that comes of a knowledge of the world; above all, no sentimental notions such as lead to mistakes like this.” He indicated the street by a gesture. “If I was mistaken a while ago in listening to my feelings rather than to my prudence, if I gave you credit for knowledge which you had had no means of gaining, I wronged you, Mary, and I am sorry for it. But I should be doing you a far greater wrong if I remained silent now.”
“Do you mean,” she asked in a low voice, “that you wish it to be at an end between us? That you wish to—to throw me over?”
He smiled awry. “That is an unpleasant way of putting it, isn’t it?” he said. “However, I am in the wrong, and I have no right to quarrel with a word. I do think that to break off our engagement at once is the best and wisest thing for both of us.”
“How long have you felt this?” she asked.