“Then how can you expect me to marry you without loving you?” “I don’t. All that I ask is that you won’t refuse me. I know that you _can_ love me.” “No, no, never!” “And I only want you to take time to try.” “I don’t wish to try. If you persist, I must leave the room. We had better part. I was foolish to see you. But I thought—I was sorry—I hoped to make it less unkind to you.” “In spite of yourself, you were relenting.” “Not at all!” “But if you pitied me, you did care for me a little?” “You know that I had the highest respect for you as a physician. I tell you that you were my ideal in that way, and I will tell you that if”—she stopped, and he continued for her. “If you had not resolved to give it up, you might have done what I asked.” “I did not say that,” she answered indignantly. “But why do you give it up?” “Because I am not equal to it.” “How do you know it? Who told you?” “_You_ have told me,—by every look and act of yours,—and I’m grateful to you for it.” “And if I told you now by word that you were fit for it.” “I shouldn’t believe you.” “You wouldn’t believe my word?” She did not answer. “I see,” he said presently, “that you doubt me somehow as a man. What is it you think of me?” “You wouldn’t like to know.” “Oh, yes, I should.” “Well, I will tell you. I think you are a tyrant, and that you want a slave, not a wife. You wish to be obeyed. You despise women. I don’t mean their minds,—they’re despicable enough, in most cases, as men’s are,—but their nature.” “This is news to me,” he said, laughing. “I never knew that I despised women’s nature.” “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.” “I will not see you again.” “You are rather hard with me, I think,” he urged gently. “I don’t think I’m playing the tyrant with you now.” “You are,—the baffled tyrant.”