"What should I do?" she asked, vexed by the truth of his words.
"You should break the engagement, tell your father you won't consider it."
"And bring shame to my father."
"Better shame for him than for you. After all, it would only be an artificial shame for him, a short-lived one at that; for you it would be all too real—and lifelong."
Nancy stood up, tired of hearing things she knew too well.
"You are kind," she said, "and it's very simple according to your ways, but these are things that can't be mended by talk."
"Wait," commanded the man, "I haven't even begun to say what I intended. I am not trying to mend a bad matter by talk. There is a better way. I know your father wanted you to marry me, else why should he have offered me the engagement? It was only annoyance, pride, injured vanity, whatever you choose to call it, that made him arrange this other hapless engagement. He has gained nothing by it, not even the terms he tried to exact from me. He has managed to keep you only one of the four years he stipulated. Do you think he is happy over this business into which he has drifted so helplessly? He is no happier than you or I. Ah, Nancy, why can't you see it, why can't you see that worry is killing him—worry over what is to become of you? If you wish to save his life, you must disobey him; you must not go back; you must stay and marry me."
By now Nancy had grown used to this habit of frank speech. Ronald's pregnant ending was outweighed by his accusation that she was killing her father.
"I must go," she said. "I can't think of these things here."
She wanted swift motion to keep time with the wheeling circles of her brain.