“I hoped you had.”
“There is not an hour of the day that you are out of my thoughts, you have given me every decent impulse I have known—you have been more to me than I can ever tell you! You must hear me—you must know how I love you—it is no matter of yesterday or the day before—for years now I have thought only of you, Virginia! Show some mercy—let me think that there is some hope.” He looked at her imploringly, but her face had only hardened as he went on, there was no sign of the pity he implored. He did not wait for her to speak. “I have been patient—I have waited—I have hoped, that you might relent; but we seem to be drifting further and further apart. I see you oppressed and burdened; I find you struggling with cares and a situation you are not fitted to meet, and which I can so quickly remedy; but you will accept nothing from me even as a friend—that is the bitterest part of it; I seem powerless to help you! If you would only let me—that would be something! You leave me only the one thing to do—to ask you again to be my wife. I know—I know,” he put out his hand, imposing silence. “Your struggle is as hopeless as it is unnecessary, the condition you are trying to fight off is older than you know—it had its beginning before Stephen and Bush went West; they felt it coming—that is the real reason they went—and what can you do but wear your life out to no purpose! Be reasonable, and escape from a condition you can not meet!”
“I can't escape from it that way.”
“Listen to me, Virginia!” he said, with gentle firmness. “I love you—you must marry me.”
“I shall never marry—such a thing is impossible.”
“No, not impossible,” he replied, doggedly determined to keep it before her as a possibility. “Why should we wear out our lives. I might have struggled against my love instead of living for it; but the result would have been the same. I should have ended here, as now, trying to tell you what you are to me, how empty my life is without you; and to think that I have failed so miserably in the one great purpose I have known!”
She was softened for the moment by the deep sincerity of his tone. “I have valued you as a friend—you have given me every reason to—I still want you for my friend.”
“That is not enough,” he said with a gesture of bitter disdain. “It is all I can give you.”
He heard Stephen come whistling up the path from the lane, and shaken by his emotion threw himself down in his chair.
“I will attend to the notes,” he said, with an attempt at composure as Stephen entered the room.