“Do you think it is right, fair,” continued the girl slowly, her brow wrinkled speculatively, “to break your uncle's and aunt's hearts for the sake of a girl? You know how they have longed for your home-coming. How much you mean to them! You are all they have. Don't you think you are selfish—very selfish?”
“I believe the Bible says to leave all and cleave unto your wife,” returned Garrison.
“Yes. But not your intended wife.”
“But, you see, she is of the cleaving type.”
“And why this hurry? Aren't you depriving your uncle and aunt unnecessarily early?”
“But it is the only answer, as you pointed out. You then would be free.”
He did not know why he was indulging in this repartee. Perhaps because the situation was so novel, so untenable. But a strange, new force was working in him that day, imparting a peculiar twist to his humor. He was hating himself. He was hopeless, cynical, bitter.
If he could have laid hands upon that eminent lawyer, Mr. Snark, he would have wrung his accomplished neck to the best of his ability. He, Snark, must have known about this prenatal engagement. And his bitterness, his hopelessness, were all the more real, for already he knew that he cared, and cared a great deal, for this curious girl with the steady gray eyes and wealth of indefinite hair; cared more than he would confess even to himself. It seemed as if he always had cared; as if he had always been looking into the depths of those great gray eyes. They were part of a dream, the focusing-point of the misty past—forever out of focus.
The girl had been considering his answer, and now she spoke.
“Of course,” she said gravely, “you are not sincere when you say your primal reason for leaving would be in order to set me free. Of course you are not sincere.”