I laughed aloud: he looked at me then in surprise. "I laugh," said I, "because I see how absurd it was to fancy that you loved me. A bridge between us! If you loved me as I love you, our love would turn water into land, melt mountains into plains: we would cross dry-shod to one another."
"Do you love me so?" he said, his blue eyes gleaming, and making a step toward me. I had power enough to make him feel, and feel strongly, but that was not enough.
"No," I said, "Mr. Lawrence, you must take nothing from me now: I can give nothing now."
"But if I want all?" he said.
I laughed again. "But you do not," I said. "I have told you I love you and would marry you. You cannot, you say. Then that ends all between us. I love you too much to be able to give you only what you give me."
"We cannot marry," he repeated: "it would be ruin to both of us."
"Go away!" I said: "I would rather be alone." I was spent, and felt feeble and weak.
"Let me tell you, first, that I admire you, esteem you, infinitely: let me say this before I go; and you will think of me kindly." He said this pleadingly.
I looked at him wonderingly. Did he not yet know how much I loved him? My courage and pride were ebbing fast away. Faintly I said, "Before you go kneel down in front of me, and let me touch your forehead with my lips." He did so, and I bent forward and took his head in both my hands and kissed it. Somehow as I did it the strange thought came to me that if I had ever had a son, just so I have kissed his head. It was a yearning feeling, with such tenderness in it that my heart seemed dissolving. Many times. I kissed it and held it, and then, "Good-bye, my only love," I said. "I could have loved you very well."
His eyes were wet with tears as he raised his head. "I shall never forget you: you are nobleness itself," he said. "God bless and prosper you, Miss Linton!" Then he went.