"Be patient," he said. "I've wondered almost from the first. You're almost a child, and I'm an old man--oh, no, I don't mean that that's any reason why you shouldn't love me, but it's a reason for my making very sure that you _do_ before I let you marry me. It's your happiness I have to think of most. Now shall I just go away for a year, or shall I speak straight out and tell you everything? If your father were alive I would try to tell him; I can't tell your mother, she wouldn't understand. You can understand. Shall I tell you?" "Yes," she said, looking at him with frightened eyes. "Well: look back. You think you love me. Haven't my letters always bored you a little, though they were about all the things I care for most?" "I don't understand politics," she said sullenly. "And I don't understand needle-work, but I could sit and watch you sew for ever and a day." "Well, go on. What other crime have I committed besides not going into raptures over Parliament?" She was growing angry, and he was glad. It is not so easy to hurt people when they are angry. "And when I am talking to your mother, that bores you too, and when we are alone, you don't care to talk of anything, but--but--" This task was harder than he had imagined possible. "I've loved you too much, and I've shown it too plainly," she said bitterly. "My dear, you've never loved me at all. You have only been in love with me." "And isn't that the same thing?" "Oh! it's no use," he said, "I must _be_ a brute then. No, it's not the same thing. It's your poets and novelists who pretend it is. It's they who have taught you all wrong. It's only half of love, and the worst half, the most untrustworthy, the least lasting. My little girl, when I kissed you first, you were just waking up to your womanhood, you were ready for love, as a flower-bud is ready for sunshine, and I happened to be the first man who had the chance to kiss you and hold your dear little hands." "Do you mean that I should have liked anyone else as well if he had only been kind enough to kiss me?" "No, no; but ... I wish girls were taught these things out of books. If you only knew what it costs me to be honest with you, how I have been tempted to let you marry me and chance everything! Don't you see you're a woman now--women were made to be kissed, and when a man behaves like a brute and kisses a girl without even asking first, or finding out first whether she loves him, it's not fair on the girl. I shall never forgive myself. Don't you see I took part of you by storm, the part of you that is just woman nature, not yours but everyone's; and how were you to know that you didn't love me, that it was only the awakening of your woman nature?" "I hate you," she said briefly. "Yes," he answered simply, "I knew you would. Hate is only one step from passion."