A smile of gratitude sweetly mastered her mouth: then it suddenly turned to a smile of pity; then it died in a quiver of remorse.
"Oh, we cannot marry," she sighed. "We must not marry, if we could. Let me tell you something dreadful. People hate each other after they are married. I know: I have seen it. I knew a girl of seventeen who married a man ten years older--a man who was Reason itself. Her friends told her, and she herself believed it, that she was sure of happiness. But after three years she found that she did not love, that she was not loved, and that she was miserable. He was too rational: he used to judge her as he would a column of figures--he had no comprehension for her feelings."
There was a momentary pause, during which she folded her hands and looked at him, but with an air of not seeing him. In the recollection of this heart-tragedy of the past and of another she had apparently forgotten the one which was now pressing upon herself.
"It was incredible how cold and unsympathizing and dull he could be," she went on. "Once, after she had worked a week in secret to surprise him with a dressing-gown made by her own hands--labored a week, waited and hoped a week for one word of praise--he only said, 'It is too short.' Don't you think it was cruel? It was. I suppose he soon forgot it, but she never could. A woman cannot forget such slights: they do not seem little blows to her; they make her very soul bleed."
"Don't reproach me for it," whispered the young man with a pleading smile. "You seem to be reproving me, and I can't bear it. I am not guilty."
"Oh, not you," she answered quickly. "I am not scolding you. I could not."
She did not mean it, but she gave him a smile of indescribable sweetness: she had had no intention of putting out her hands toward him, but she did it. He seized the delicate fingers and slowly drew her against his heart. Her face crimson with feeling, her whole form trembling to the tiniest vein, she rose to her feet, turning away her head as if to fly, and yet did not escape, and could not wish to escape. Holding her in his arm, he poured into her ear a murmur which was not words, it was so much more than words.
"Oh, could you truly love me?" she at last sobbed. "Could you keep loving me?"
After a while some painful recollection seemed to awaken her from this dream of happiness, and, drawing herself out of his embrace, she looked him sadly in the eyes, saying, "I must not be so weak. I must save myself and you from misery. Oh, I must. Go now--leave me for a while: do go. I must have time to think before I say another word to you."
"Good-bye, my love--soon to be my wife," he answered, stifling with a kiss the "No, no," which she tried to utter.