She rose. "Well, at all events, I understand exactly what you mean. If you are so good as to marry me, I am to be hidden away; I am to serve as a soothing syrup for shattered nerves; I am to be an antidote to bad music; I am to be ashamed of my own people, and to give up my old friends. That is understood, is it not?"
"We exchange sacrifices—mine the sacrifice of marrying beneath me; yours, that of giving up an ignoble troop of relations."
To plain persons every word that this girl had spoken would have been a clear announcement of her decision. To this young man no such intention was conveyed. Still in the fulness of his self-conceit, the sacrifice he himself proposed in actually marrying a girl with such family connections seemed so enormous, while the prospect of becoming his wife seemed to him so dazzling, that he was totally unable to understand any hesitation. Molly was whimsical; she did not like to surrender her independence. He liked her the better for it. No meek submissive maiden, however lovely, would be able to command that sacrifice. And, besides, there was that strange magic about the girl's face and eyes and voice, that in her presence, as has been explained already, the young man's mind was full of yearnings after transports unspeakable—after the Flowery Way, where the dancers are, with the castanets and the champagne and raptures that even the newest Art cannot bestow.
"Humphrey," she said, "suppose that in a moment—all in a moment—the things you value most in the world should vanish?"
"My Art? My genius?"
"No; not such genius as you may possess. That is not what you value most. I mean your birth and rank and position in the world. Suppose that were to vanish suddenly away?"
"You talk nonsense."
"I say, suppose it were to vanish suddenly away—suppose you were to become—say—one of my cousins—born like them——"
"Molly, don't waste time in talking nonsense."