now. "Oh, Mr. Lawrence, let us be frank with one another. There is no
need to part. Do you think your poverty is any barrier between us? It
is but an added bond. Can I not work too? And we will learn to think
alike where we now differ. Why should we part? We love each other. Why
should we not marry? What can part us but our own wills? I love you,
you know it, and I think you love me; at least I am sure I could
teach you to love me." He stood while I spoke, his arms hanging by his
sides. What more I said I hardly know. I think--I am sure, indeed--I
told him, standing there, how I loved him. I felt I must speak it once
to one human being. A great foresight came to me: I seemed to see my
life stretching before me, long, lonely, desolate: no other love like
this could come, full well I knew that, and I could not enter on that
dreary path without setting free my soul. Yes, I spoke out to him.
Words of power they were--power and fire and longing. Perhaps I
alone, of all women, have told a man of my love when I knew it to be
hopeless. My hope had died when he first spoke. Had he loved me, he
had spoken otherwise. That I was woman enough to see; but if it be
unwomanly to feel in every pulse-throb the need of expression, to know
that I should die of suppressed passion, tenderness, love, if I did
not speak it all, did not tell him once how I loved him, how I could
have lived his servant, his slave, happy and content--how his smile
seemed the sun and his caresses heaven to me--how I was hungry with
the hunger of my very soul to spend on him the garnered treasure of my
heart,--if this be unwomanly, I was indeed unsexed. I seemed exalted
out of myself, and full of power.

He heard me, and it moved him. He spoke again when I had finished. He
had not lifted his eyes to mine, and did not then. He said, "I could
not marry you: it would be the worst possible thing for both of us.
Your life would be miserable--mine most wretched. You must see that