“And despise me? Well, you must. I told you I was going to be candid, and perhaps it is as well—as well, I mean, that you should know me,” she replied, apparently unmoved.
“I am content,” he answered, catching her spirit.
“And so am I,” she said. “To no one else in the world would I have said as much as I have said to you. To no other man would I say, ‘Win a living, and I will be yours!’ But I say it to you. Do as much as that for me and I will marry you, Stephen. If you cannot, I cannot.”
“You are very prosaic,” he replied, lapsing into bitterness again.
“Oh, if you are not content” she retorted.
He did not let her finish the sentence. “You will marry me on the day I obtain a living?” he asked.
“I will,” she answered bravely.
She was standing up now, and he too—standing where the rector had stood an hour before. She let him pass his arm round her waist, but when he would have drawn her closer to him, and bent his head to kiss her, she hung back. “No,” she said, blushing hotly, “I think”—with a shy laugh—“that you are making too certain, sir.”
“Do you wish me not to succeed?” he replied, looking down at her; and it must be confessed the lover’s rôle became him better than nine-tenths of those who knew his dark, rugged face would have believed.
She shook her head, smiling.