"I think you have been wrong,--very wrong and very foolish." "In not taking a man I do not love?" said Mary. "You do love him; but you are longing for you do not know what; some romance,--some grand passion,--something that will never come." "Shall I tell you what I want?" "If you please." "A feeling such as you have for Frank. You are my model; I want nothing beyond that." "That comes after marriage. Frank was very little to me till we were man and wife. He'll tell you the same. I don't know whether I didn't almost dislike him when I married him." "Oh, Janet!" "Certainly the sort of love you are thinking of comes afterwards;--when the interests of two people are the same. Frank was very well as a lover." "Don't I remember it?" "You were a child." "I was fifteen; and don't I remember how all the world used to change for you when he was coming? There wasn't a ribbon you wore but you wore it for him; you dressed yourself in his eyes; you lived by his thoughts." "That was all after I was engaged. If you would accept Harry Gilmore, you would do just the same." "I must be sure that it would be so. I am now almost sure that it would not." "And why do you want to go home?" "That he may not be pestered by having me near him. I think it will be better for him that I should go." "And he is to ask you again?" "He says that he will--in three months. But you should tell him that it will be better that he should not. I would advise him to travel,--if I were his friend, like you." "And leave all his duties, and his pleasures, and his house, and his property, because of your face and figure, my dear! I don't think any woman is worth so much to a man." Mary bit her lips in sorrow for what she had said. "I was thinking of his own speech about himself, Janet, not of my worth. It does not astonish you more than it does me that such a man as Mr. Gilmore should be perplexed in spirit for such a cause. But he says that he is perplexed." "Of course he is perplexed, and of course I was in joke. Only it does seem so hard upon him! I should like to shake you till you fell into his arms. I know it would be best for you. You will go on examining your own feelings and doubting about your heart, and waiting for something that will never come till you will have lost your time. That is the way old maids are made. If you married Harry, by the time your first child was born you would think that he was Jupiter,--just as I think that Frank is." Mrs. Fenwick owned, however, that as matters stood at present, it would be best that Mary should return home; and letters were written that afternoon to say that she would be at Loring by the middle of next week.