“No. He's simply fallen in with what we've said. It's because he's so sweet and yielding, and can't bear to refuse. I can understand it perfectly.”
“Then if he hasn't promised us, he's deceived us all the more shamefully, for he's made us think he had.”
“He hasn't me,” said Mrs. Pasmer, smiling at the stormy virtue in her daughter's face. “And what if you should go home awhile with him—for the summer, say? It couldn't last longer, much; and it wouldn't hurt us to wait. I suppose he hoped for something of that kind.”
“Oh, it isn't that,” groaned the girl, in a kind of bewilderment. “I could have gone there with him joyfully, and lived all my days, if he'd only been frank with me.”
“Oh no, you couldn't,” said her mother, with cosy security. “When it comes to it, you don't like giving up any more than other people. It's very hard for you to give up; he sees that—he knows it, and he doesn't really like to ask any sort of sacrifice from you. He's afraid of you.”
“Don't I know that?” demanded Alice desolately: “I've known it from the first, and I've felt it all the time. It's all a mistake, and has been. We never could understand each other. We're too different.”
“That needn't prevent you understanding him. It needn't prevent you from seeing how really kind and good he is—how faithful and constant he is.”
“Oh, you say that—you praise him—because you like him.”
“Of course I do. And can't you?”
“No. The least grain of deceit—of temporising, you call it—spoils everything. It's over,” said the girl, rising, with a sigh, from the chair she had dropped into. “We're best apart; we could only have been wretched and wicked together.”