"

"Are you so sure of yourself?"

"Quite sure;--quite sure. Do you think I would hurt him?"

"No, no. You would not, I know, do so willingly."

"And yet I must hurt him a little. I hope it will hurt him just
a little." Mrs. Roden stared at her. "Oh, if I could make him
understand it all! If I could bid him be a man, so that it should
wound him only for a short time."

"What wound!"

"Did you think that I could take him, I, the daughter of a City
clerk, to go and sit in his halls, and shame him before all the
world, because he had thought fit to make me his wife? Never!"

"Marion, Marion!"

"Because he has made a mistake which has honoured me, shall I mistake
also, so as to dishonour him? Because he has not seen the distance,
shall I be blind to it? He would have given himself up for me. Shall
I not be able to make a sacrifice? To such a one as I am to sacrifice
myself is all that I can do in the world."

"Is it such a sacrifice?"

"Could it be that I should not love him? When such a one comes,
casting his pearls about, throwing sweet odours through the air,
whispering words which are soft-sounding as music in the heavens,
whispering them to me, casting them at me, turning on me the laughing
glances of his young eyes, how could I help to love him? Do you
remember when for a moment he knelt almost at my feet, and told me
that I was his friend, and spoke to me of his hearth? Did you think
that that did not move me?"

"So soon, my child;--so soon?"

"In a moment. Is it not so that it is done always?"

"Hearts are harder than that, Marion."

"Mine, I think, was so soft just then that the half of his sweet
things would have ravished it from my bosom. But I feel for myself
that there are two parts in me. Though the one can melt away, and
pass altogether from my control, can gush like water that runs
out and cannot be checked, the other has something in it of hard
substance which can stand against blows, even from him."

"What is that something, Marion?"

"Nay, I cannot name it. I think it be another heart, of finer
substance, or it may be it is woman's pride, which will suffer all
things rather than hurt the one it loves. I know myself. No words
from him,--no desire to see his joy, as he would be joyful, if I told
him that I could give him all he asks,--no longing for all his love
could do for me, shall move me one tittle. He shall tell himself to
his dying day that the Quaker girl, because she loved him