“The truth—what truth?”

“That I have, after many hours of the deepest, the most painful consideration, come to the conclusion that I am not worthy of you.”

Her face went white. He thought for a moment she would faint and stepped forward to catch her, but she slowly reached a hand to her left arm, as if to feel she was awake.

“Charles… you are joking.”

“To my eternal shame… I am not joking.”

“You are not worthy of me?”

“Totally unworthy.”

“And you… oh, but this is some nightmare.” She looked up at him with incredulous eyes, then smiled timidly. “You forget your telegram. You are joking.”

“How little you know me if you think I could ever joke on such a matter.”

“But… but… your telegram!”

“Was sent before my decision.”

Only then, as he lowered his eyes, did she begin to accept the truth. He had already foreseen that it must be the crucial moment. If she fainted, became hysterical… he did not know; but he abhorred pain and it would not be too late to recant, to tell all, to throw himself on her mercy. But though Ernestina’s eyes closed a long moment, and a kind of shiver seemed to pass through her, she did not faint. She was her father’s daughter; she may have wished she might faint; but such a gross betrayal of…

“Then kindly explain what you mean.”

A momentary relief came to him. She was hurt, but not mortally.

“That I cannot do in one sentence.”

She stared with a kind of bitter primness at her hands. “Then use several. I shall not interrupt.”

“I have always had, and I continue to have, the greatest respect and affection for you. I have never doubted for a moment that you would make an admirable wife to any man fortunate enough to gain your love. But I have also always been shamefully aware that a part of my regard for you was ignoble. I refer to the fortune that you bring—and the fact that you are an only child. Deep in myself, Ernestina, I have always felt that my life has been without purpose, without achievement. No, pray hear me out. When I realized last winter that an offer of marriage might be favorably entertained by you, I was tempted by Satan. I saw an opportunity, by a brilliant marriage, to reestablish my faith in myself. I beg you not to think that I proceeded only by a cold-blooded calculation. I liked you very much. I sincerely believed that that liking would grow into love.”

Slowly her head had risen. She stared at him, but seemed hardly to see him.

“I cannot believe it is you I hear speaking. It is some impostor, some cruel, some heartless…”

“I know this must come as a most grievous shock.”

“Shock!” Her expression was outraged. “When you can stand so cold and collected—and tell me you have never loved me!”

She had raised her voice and he went to one of the windows that was opened and closed it. Standing closer to her bowed head, he spoke as gently as he could without losing his distance.

“I am not seeking for excuses. I am seeking simply to explain that my crime was not a calculated one. If it were, how could I do what I am doing now? My one desire is to make you understand that I am not a deceiver of anyone but myself. Call me what else you will—weak, selfish… what you will—but not callous.”

She drew in a little shuddery breath.

“And what brought about this great discovery?”

“My realization, whose heinousness I cannot shirk, that I was disappointed when your father did not end our engagement for me.” She gave him a terrible look. “I am trying to be honest. He was not only most generous in the matter of my changed circumstances. He proposed that I should one day become his partner in business.”

Her face flashed up again. “I knew it, I knew it. It is because you are marrying into trade. Am I not right?”

He turned to the window. “I had fully accepted that. In any case—to feel ashamed of your father would be the grossest snobbery.”

“Saying things doesn’t make one any the less guilty of them.”

“If you think I viewed his new proposal with horror, you are quite right. But the horror was at my own ineligibility for what was intended—certainly not at the proposal itself. Now please let me finish my… explanation.”

“It is making my heart break.”

He turned away to the window.

“Let us try to cling to that respect we have always had for one another. You must not think I have considered only myself in all this. What haunts me is the injustice I should be doing you—and to your father—by marrying you without that love you deserve. If you and I were different people—but we are not, we know by a look, a word, whether our love is returned—”

She hissed. “We thought we knew.”

“My dear Ernestina, it is like faith in Christianity. One can pretend to have it. But the pretense will finally out. I am convinced, if you search your heart, that faint doubts must have already crossed it. No doubt you stifled them, you said, he is—”

She covered her ears, then slowly drew her fingers down over her face. There was a silence. Then she said, “May I speak now?”

“Of course.”

“I know to you I have never been anything more than a pretty little… article of drawing-room furniture. I know I am innocent. I know I am spoiled. I know I am not unusual. I am not a Helen of Troy or a Cleopatra. I know I say things that sometimes grate on your ears, I bore you about domestic arrangements, I hurt you when I make fun of your fossils. Perhaps I am just a child. But under your love and protection… and your education… I believed I should become better. I should learn to please you, I should learn to make you love me for what I had become. You may not know it, you cannot know it, but that is why I was first attracted to you. You do know that I had been… dangled before a hundred other men. They were not all fortune hunters and nonentities. I did not choose you because I was so innocent I could not make comparisons. But because you seemed more generous, wiser, more experienced. I remember—I will fetch down my diary if you do not believe me—that I wrote, soon after we became engaged, that you have little faith in yourself. I have felt that. You believe yourself a failure, you think yourself despised, I know not what… but that is what I wished to make my real bridal present to you. Faith in yourself.”

There was a long silence. She stayed with lowered head.

He spoke in a low voice. “You remind me of how much I lose. Alas, I know myself too well. One can’t resurrect what was never there.”

“And that is all what I say means to you?”

“It means a great, a very great deal to me.”

He was silent, though she plainly expected him to say more. He had not expected this containment. He was touched, and ashamed, by what she had said; and that he could not show either sentiment was what made him silent. Her voice was very soft and downward.

“In view of what I have said can you not at least…” but she could not find the words.

“Reconsider my decision?”

She must have heard something in his tone that he had not meant to be there, for she suddenly looked at him with a passionate appeal. Her eyes were wet with suppressed tears, her small face white and pitifully struggling to keep some semblance of calm. He felt it like a knife: how deeply he had wounded.

“Charles, I beg you, I beg you to wait a little. It is true, I am ignorant, I do not know what you want of me… if you would tell me where I have failed… how you would wish me to be… I will do anything, anything, because I would abandon anything to make you happy.”

“You must not speak like that.”

“I must—I can’t help it—only yesterday that telegram, I wept, I have kissed it a hundred times, you must not think that because I tease I do not have deeper feelings. I would…” but her voice trailed away, as an acrid intuition burst upon her. She threw him a fierce little look. “You are lying. Something has happened since you sent it.”