“It’s true, whether you knew it or not.”
“Do I despise you?”
“You would, if you saw that I was afraid of you: Oh, why do you force me to say such things? Why don’t you spare me—spare yourself?”
“In this cause I couldn’t spare myself. I can’t bear to give you up! I’m what I am, whatever you say; but with you, I could be whatever you would. I could show you that you are wrong if you gave me the chance. I know that I could make you happy. Listen to me a moment.”
“It’s useless.”
“No! If you have taken the trouble to read me in this way, there must have been a time when you might have cared.”
“There never was any such time. I read you from the first.”
“I will go away,” he said, after a pause, in which she had risen, and began a retreat towards the door. “But I will not—I cannot—give you up. I will see you again.”
“No, sir. You shall not see me again. I will not submit to it. I will not be persecuted.” She was trembling, and she knew that he saw her tremor.
“Well,” he said, with a smile that recognized her trepidation, “I will not persecute you. I’ll renounce these pretensions. But I’ll ask you to see me once more, as a friend,—an acquaintance.”