“Why don’t you continue?” said she, with a cold smile.
“Because I don’t know what I was about to say.”
“It was this, then, or at least to this purport: If you, Miss Florence Walter, are of opinion that two people who have not succeeded in inspiring each other with that degree of confidence that rejects all distrust, are scarcely wise in entering into a contract of which truthfulness is the very soul and essence, and that, though not very gallant on _my_ part, as the man to suggest it, yet in all candour, which here must take the place of courtesy, the sooner the persons so placed escape from such a false position the better.”
“And part?” said he, in a hollow feeble voice.
She shrugged her shoulders slightly, as though to say that, or any similar word, will convey my meaning.
“Oh, Florence, is it come to this? Is this to be a last evening in its saddest, bitterest sense?”
“When gentlemen declare that they ‘insist,’ I take it they mean to have their way,” said she, with a careless toss of her head.
“Good Heavens!” cried he in a passion, “have you never cared for me at all? or is your love so little rooted that you can tear it from your heart without a pang?”
“All this going back on the past is very unprofitable,” said she coldly.
He was stung by the contemptuous tone even more than by the words she used. It seemed as though she held his love so lightly she would not condescend to the slightest trouble to retain it, and this too at a moment of parting.
“Florence!” said he, in a tone of deep melancholy, “if I am to call you by that name for the last time--tell me, frankly, is this a sudden caprice of yours, or has it lain rankling in your mind, as a thing you would conquer if you could, or submit to, if you must?”
“I suspect it is neither one nor the other,” said she with a levity that almost seemed gaiety. “I don’t think I am capricious, and I know I never harbour a longstanding grievance. I really believe that it is to your own heart you must look for the reasons of what has occurred between us. I have often heard that men are so ashamed of being jealous, that they’ll never forgive anyone who sees them in the fit.”
“Enough, more than enough,” said he, trembling from head to foot. “Let us part.”