But then, why do you repulse me?"
"I don't repulse you. I like you to--tell me you love me; and you
may always tell me so as you go about with me--and never offend me."
"But you will not accept me as a husband?"
"Ah--that's different--it is for your good, indeed, my dearest!
O, believe me, it is only for your sake! I don't like to give
myself the great happiness o' promising to be yours in that
way--because--because I am SURE I ought not to do it."
"But you will make me happy!"
"Ah--you think so, but you don't know!"
At such times as this, apprehending the grounds of her refusal to be
her modest sense of incompetence in matters social and polite, he
would say that she was wonderfully well-informed and versatile--which
was certainly true, her natural quickness and her admiration for him
having led her to pick up his vocabulary, his accent, and fragments
of his knowledge, to a surprising extent. After these tender
contests and her victory she would go away by herself under the
remotest cow, if at milking-time, or into the sedge or into her room,
if at a leisure interval, and mourn silently, not a minute after an
apparently phlegmatic negative.
The struggle was so fearful; her own heart was so strongly on the
side of his--two ardent hearts against one poor little conscience--
that she tried to fortify her resolution by every means in her power.
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