that she invariably went on with her work heedless
of his presence, and in everything treated
him as if she had been his equal. She persisted
in talking with him in a half sisterly fashion
about his studies and his future career, warned
him with great solicitude against some of his
reprobate friends, of whose merry adventures
he had told her; and if he ventured to compliment
her on her beauty or her accomplishments,
she would look up gravely from her sewing, or
answer him in a way which seemed to banish
the idea of love-making into the land of the
impossible. He was constantly tormented by the
suspicion that she secretly disapproved of him,
and that from a mere moral interest in his welfare
she was conscientiously laboring to make
him a better man. Day after day he parted
from her feeling humiliated, faint-hearted, and
secretly indignant both at himself and her, and
day after day he returned only to renew the
same experience. At last it became too intolerable,
he could endure it no longer. Let it make
or break, certainty, at all risks, was at least
preferable to this sickening suspense. That he
loved her, he could no longer doubt; let his
parents foam and fret as much as they pleased;
for once he was going to stand on his own legs.
And in the end, he thought, they would have to
yield, for they had no son but him.