"Everest is rather anxious to marry me," she remarked. "Would you like that better, if he did?"
Miss Lanark started and sat bolt upright:
"You! Marry you! A country rector's daughter, and an artist!" Had she said "criminal" the accent could not have been more marked. "And Everest! He could have anybody! There is not one girl in town who would refuse him ... and then, to marry you!"
"Still, he would not be living in sin, would he?" returned Regina, nibbling the end of her paint-brush and looking across the red firelight at her visitor, with a laugh in her great, lustrous eyes.
Miss Lanark covered her face with her thin, beautifully gloved hands.
"Oh, it is all horrible!—whether he marries you or lives with you.... Cannot you go away and leave him to marry someone suitable, as he would have done, but for you?"
"You think for him to marry a woman he disliked, and perhaps hated, would be better than to live with one he loves, without marriage?"
"Oh yes!" replied Miss Lanark, so fervently that Regina sat silent, thinking how truly "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life," marvelling at the distance away from the truth of their religion the modern Christian has got.
"Well, you see, I don't. I consider hate is a wrong and wicked thing in itself, essentially evil; and I think wedded hate is a great deal worse than unwedded love, so that I am afraid I cannot meet you in any way, except by accepting Everest's proposal that we should marry each other, but so far, for his sake, I have thought it better for him to be quite free."