第10章

"I have waited too long already from necessity." It was on his lips to add:

"I have gone too far with her; it is too late to retreat;" but he checked himself.

"If I should feel, then, that I must withhold my consent?"He grew serious, and after the silence of a few moments, he said with great respect:"I should be sorry; but--" and then he forbore.

"If Major Falconer should withhold his?"

He shook his head, and set his lips, turning his face away through courtesy.

"It would make no difference! Nothing would make any difference!" and then another silence followed.

"I suppose all this would be considered the proof that you loved her," she began at length, despairingly, "but even love is not enough to begin with;much less is it enough to live by."

"You don't appreciate her! You don't do her justice!" he cried rudely."But perhaps no woman can ever understand why a man loves any other woman!""I am not thinking of why you love my niece," she replied, with a curl of pride in her nostril and a flash of anger in her eyes."I am thinking of why you will cease to love her, and why you will both be unhappy if you marry her.It is not my duty to analyze your affections; it is my duty to take care of her welfare.""My dear friend," he cried, his face aglow with impatient enthusiasm --"my dear friend" and he suddenly lifted her hand to his lips, "I have but one anxiety in the whole matter: will you cease to be my friend if I act in opposition to your wishes?""Should I cease to be your friend because you had made a mistake? It is not to me you are unkind," she answered, quickly withdrawing her hand.Spots of the palest rose appeared on her cheeks, and she bent over and picked up the rake, and began to work.

"I must be going," he said awkwardly; "it is getting late.""Yes," she said; "it is getting late."

Still he lingered, swinging his hat in his hand, ill at case, with his face set hard away.

"Is that all you have to say to me?" he asked at length, wheeling and looking her steadily and fondly in the eyes.

"That is all," she replied, controlling the quiver in her voice; but then letting herself go a little, she added with slow distinctness:

"You might remember this: some women in marrying demand all and give all:

with good men they are the happy; with base men they are the brokenhearted.

Some demand everything and give little: with weak men they are tyrants; with strong men they are the divorced.Some demand little and give all: with congenial souls they are already in heaven; with uncongenial they are soon in their graves.Some give little and demand little: they are the heartless, and they bring neither the joy of life nor the peace of death.""And which of these is Amy?" he said, after a minute of reflection."And which of the men am I?""Don't ask her to marry you until you find out both," she answered.

She watched him as he strode away from her across the clearing, with a look in her eyes that she knew nothing of--watched him, motionless, until his tall, black figure passed from sight behind the green sunlit wall of the wilderness.What undisciplined, unawakened strength there was in him! how far such a stride as that would carry him on in life! It was like the tread of one of his own forefathers in Cromwell's unconquer-able, hymn-singing armies.She loved to think of him as holding his descent from a line so pious and so grim: it served to account to her for the quality of stern, spiritual soldiership that still seemed to be the mastering trait of his nature.How long would it remain so, was the question that she had often asked of herself.A fighter in the world he would always be--she felt sure of that; nor was it necessary to look into his past to obtain this assurance; one had but to look into his eyes.Moreover, she had little doubt that with a temper so steadily bent on conflict, he would never suffer defeat where his own utmost strength was all that was needed to conquer.But as he grew older, and the world in part conquered him as it conquers so many of us, would he go into his later battles as he had entered his earlier ones--to the measure of a sacred chant? Beneath the sweat and wounds of all his victories would he carry the white lustre of conscience, burning untarnished in him to the end?