“Don’t talk about my throwing you over,” he said, more sternly than she had heard him speak for a long time. “I might feel bound in honour to release you from your promise.”
“You couldn’t if I refused to release you.”
“I must think what is the best thing to be done for you.”
“The best thing? Ask Maurice. When I told him you and I were engaged, he said it was the finest news he had heard for many a day.”
“It would have been wiser to ask your sister-in-law.”
“Worldly-wiser, perhaps! No, not even that. Have I been so particularly happy and useful all these years, so conspicuously successful in my influence on every one around me, that you want to condemn me to it all again? I suppose you think that trouble is good for me, since you are kind enough to let me be engaged to you as long as you are expecting to be killed, and then, as soon as that strain is over, go on to jilt me.”
“You must let me think,” repeated Wylie, dropping into his chair. “It is harder for me than for you.”
Zoe’s eyes flamed. “Harder!” she cried. “If you cared for me, it might be.”
“Not care?” he groaned. “It’s because I do care——”
“It is not!” she said passionately, standing in front of him like an accuser. “It is because you are afraid what people will say, or hint, or think about you. You say it would be hard to give me up, but it would be harder to say to yourself,—I don’t even ask you to say it to me,—‘It was pride that kept us apart all these years, and I won’t let it do us any more harm now.’”