"I want to act honest with you, and you won't let me. If ever there was a sulky pig! ...Sarah's quite right; you are just the sort that would make hell of a man's life." She was bound to make him respect her. She had vaguely felt from the beginning that this was her only hope, and now the sensation developed and defined itself into a thought and she decided that she would not yield, but would continue to affirm her belief that he must acknowledge his sin, and then come and ask her to marry him. Above all things, Esther desired to see William repentant. Her natural piety, filling as it did her entire life, unconsciously made her deem repentance an essential condition of their happiness. How could they be happy if he were not a God-fearing man? This question presented itself constantly, and she was suddenly convinced that she could not marry him until he had asked forgiveness of the Lord. Then they would be joined together, and would love each other faithfully unto death. But in conflict with her prejudices, her natural love of the man was as the sun shining above a fog-laden valley; rays of passion pierced her stubborn nature, dissolving it, and unconsciously her eyes sought William's, and unconsciously her steps strayed from the kitchen when her ears told her he was in the passage. But when her love went out freely to William, when she longed to throw herself in his arms, saying, "Yes, I love you; make me your wife," she noticed, or thought she noticed, that he avoided her eyes, and she felt that thoughts of which she knew nothing had obtained a footing in his mind, and she was full of foreboding. Her heart being intent on him, she was aware of much that escaped the ordinary eye, and she was the first to notice when the drawing-room bell rang, and Mr. Leopold rose, that William would say, "My legs are the youngest, don't you stir."