“My side, Miss Sylvia?”
“I have to be honest with you. I can’t pretend to be what I am not, or to feel what I don’t feel. If I were to marry you, I should try to do my duty as a wife; I should do everything in my power, honestly and sincerely. But I don’t love you, and I don’t see how I ever could love you.”
“But—Miss Sylvia—” he exclaimed, hardly able to speak for his agitation. “You mean that you would marry me?”
“I didn’t know if you would want to marry me—when I had told you that.”
He was leaning forward, clenching and unclenching his hands nervously. “I wouldn’t mind—really!” he said.
“Even if you knew—” she began.
“Miss Sylvia,” he cried, “I love you! Don’t you understand how I love you?”
“Yes, but—if I couldn’t—if I didn’t love you?”
“I would take what you could give me! I love you so much, nothing would matter. I believe that you would come to love me! If you would only give me a chance, Miss Sylvia—”
“But suppose!” she protested. “Suppose you found that I never did! Suppose—”