“No, no, never!”

“And I only want you to take time to try.”

“I don’t wish to try. If you persist, I must leave the room. We had better part. I was foolish to see you. But I thought—I was sorry—I hoped to make it less unkind to you.”

“In spite of yourself, you were relenting.”

“Not at all!”

“But if you pitied me, you did care for me a little?”

“You know that I had the highest respect for you as a physician. I tell you that you were my ideal in that way, and I will tell you that if”—she stopped, and he continued for her.

“If you had not resolved to give it up, you might have done what I asked.”

“I did not say that,” she answered indignantly.

“But why do you give it up?”