“Civilization means hardened selfishness,” he said. “It conjugates all its tenses with to have, seldom with to be.”
I asked myself whether this bitterness was a protest against the social barrier between us, and I said, reproachfully:
“I don’t like you in this mood. You are hard.”
“The sordid side of life has been thrust upon me,” he said, sadly. “I have known poverty and riches, and I have suffered almost as much from one as the other, till I hate such influences. Why, even you—a girl of twenty—would deny your best impulses if you fell in love with a man below you in position. Look into my eyes and tell me if I have guessed the truth?”
I looked into his eyes and saw something that made the color mount to my cheeks and set my heart thumping.
“A girl doesn’t own her own life, Mr. Holford,” I managed to answer. “She only owns a little part of herself called her heart, and that seems of small consequence to her elders.”
“Her elders!” he repeated, scornfully. “There spoke the conventional girl. We will not talk in quibbles any longer. I love you. I am an honorable man, and therefore worthy of the woman I love. I can support you in decent comfort. Will you marry me?”
He held out that handsome brown hand to me, and I put mine in it.
“I will love you,” I said, “because I cannot help myself, but I will not marry you without my mother’s consent, because it would make me miserable. You have loved me in spite of my classbound education, now win me openly and honorably or go your way.”
I sprang to my feet, meaning to leave him, but he caught my frock like a naughty child, and held me while he scrambled painfully to his feet.