“A mistake!” he echoed. “Ay, it was a mistake! And, as I said, it is not the first I have made. My life has been full of blunders.”
“Oh!” said Georgie, “how I wish I was wise enough to know how to set them right. If you would only trust me and let me try.”
“I thought there was a way,” he said, “but you did not agree with me.”
“I knew better,” shaking her head, and coloring. “And perhaps I was too proud and jealous. I am not so good as you think me. I am very fond of you, but not fond enough to take your half-loaf. Let us forget it altogether.”
Surely, so serious a question was never so dismissed in so short a time. For these few busy moments, the matter was as completely disposed of, as if they had spent hours in arguing it. He scarcely knew how it was that he felt so sure that he need say no more; that the brave, simple, pretty Georgie had set his poor, weak plans aside so easily, and yet so tenderly. Much as he admired and reverenced her, there was a depth in her girlish nature which he had never sounded. It was all over for him with Georgie Esmond, though he need not fear that her friendship would ever waver.
“If I was only wise enough to help you,” she repeated; “if you would only trust me, and let me try.”
“If any one could help me, you could,” he said, “but there is no help for me.”
He had never once admitted to himself that this miserable passion could ever make him happy. It had never occurred to his mind that its termination would be anything but a wretched and humiliating one. As Georgie had suggested, he loved, but had not forgiven, and he told himself that his love was degraded infatuation. What was there to tie to in such a feeling? Did he trust the woman to whom he was in secret a slave? No, he trusted her no more to-day than he had done before. But she had a hold upon his heart-strings, nevertheless. The old witchery was exercising its full power upon him. It had been so strong, at last, that he had been maddened into making this coward’s effort to free himself. If Georgie would stretch out her hand, she might save him a fatal weakness, and so, even while he despised himself for his selfish folly, he had resolved to throw himself upon Georgie’s mercy. And here was the end of it! Georgie was wiser than himself, clearer of sight, truer of soul, stronger, with a brave simplicity; and she had proved to him what a shameful folly it was. Georgie would have none of him; and yet how sweet she was, God bless her!