This he said so solemnly that he startled her.
“What question, Arthur?”
“Do you love me?” To this question at the moment she could make no reply. “Of course I know that you did not love me when you married him.”
“Love is not all of one kind.”
“You know what love I mean. You did not love me then. You could not have loved me—though, perhaps, I thought I had deserved your love. But love will change, and memory will sometimes bring back old fancies when the world has been stern and hard. When we were very young I think you loved me. Do you remember seven years ago at Longbarns, when they parted us and sent me away, because—because we were so young? They did not tell us then, but I think you knew. I know that I knew, and went nigh to swear that I would drown myself. You loved me then, Emily.”
“I was a child then.”
“Now you are not a child. Do you love me now—today? If so, give me your hand, and let the past be buried in silence. All this has come, and gone, and has nearly made us old. But there is life before us yet, and if you are to me as I am to you it is better that our lives should be lived together.” Then he stood before her with his hand stretched out.
“I cannot do it,” she said.
“And why?”
“I cannot be other than the wretched thing I have made myself.”
“But do you love me?”
“I cannot analyse my heart. Love you;—yes! I have always loved you. Everything about you is dear to me. I can triumph in your triumphs, rejoice at your joy, weep at your sorrows, be ever anxious that all good things may come to you;—but, Arthur, I cannot be your wife.”
“Not though it would make us happy—Fletchers and Whartons all alike?”
“Do you think I have not thought it over? Do you think that I have forgotten your first letter? Knowing your heart, as I do know it, do you imagine that I have spent a day, an hour, for months past, without asking myself what answer I should make to you if the sweet constancy of your nature should bring you again to me? I have trembled when I have heard your voice. My heart has beat at the sound of your footstep as though it would burst! Do you think I have never told myself what I had thrown away? But it is gone, and it is not now within my reach.”
“It is; it is,” he said, throwing himself on his knees, and twining his arms round her.
“No;—no;—no;—never. I am disgraced and shamed. I have lain among the pots till I am foul and blackened. Take your arms away. They shall not be defiled,” she said as she sprang to her feet. “You shall not have the thing that he has left.”
“Emily—it is the only thing in the world that I crave.”
“Be a man and conquer your love—as I will. Get it under your feet and press it to death. Tell yourself that it is shameful and must be abandoned. That you, Arthur Fletcher, should marry the widow of that man—the woman that he had thrust so far into the mire that she can never again be clean;—you, the chosen one, the bright star among us all;—you, whose wife should be the fairest, the purest, the tenderest of us all, a flower that has yet been hardly breathed on! While I—Arthur,” she said, “I know my duty better than that. I will not seek an escape from my punishment in that way—nor will I allow you to destroy yourself. You have my word as a woman that it shall not be so. Now I do not mind your knowing whether I love you or no.” He stood silent before her, not able for the moment to go on with his prayer. “And now, go,” she said. “God bless you, and give you some day a fair and happy wife. And, Arthur, do not come again to me. If you will let it be so, I shall have a delight in seeing you;—but not if you come as you have come now. And, Arthur, spare me with papa. Do not let him think that it is all my fault that I cannot do the thing which he wishes.” Then she left the room before he could say another word to her.
But it was all her fault. No;—in that direction he could not spare her. It must be told to her father, though he doubted his own power of describing all that had been said. “Do not come again to me,” she had said. At the moment he had been left speechless; but if there was one thing fixed in his mind, it was the determination to come again. He was sure now, not only of love that might have sufficed—but of hot, passionate love. She had told him that her heart had beat at his footsteps, and that she had trembled as she listened to his voice;—and yet she expected that he would not come again! But there was a violence of decision about the woman which made him dread that he might still come in vain. She was so warped from herself by the conviction of her great mistake, so prone to take shame to herself for her own error, so keenly alive to the degradation to which she had been submitted, that it might yet be impossible to teach her that, though her husband had been vile and she mistaken, yet she had not been soiled by his baseness.
He went at once to the old barrister’s chambers and told him the result of the meeting. “She is still a fool,” said the father, not understanding at
