close intimacy of married life, when the trifles of every day would
have worn away the courtesies of guest and lover?"

There was a sharpness of rebuke in this which Godfrey Holmes could
not at the moment overcome. Nevertheless he knew the girl, and
understood the workings of her heart and mind. Now, in her present
state, she could be unbending, proud, and almost rough. In that she
had much to lose in declining the renewed offer which he made her,
she would, as it were, continually prompt herself to be harsh and
inflexible. Had he been poor, had she not loved him, had not all
good things seemed to have attended the promise of such a marriage,
she would have been less suspicious of herself in receiving the
offer, and more gracious in replying to it. Had he lost all his
money before he came back to her, she would have taken him at once;
or had he been deprived of an eye, or become crippled in his legs,
she would have done so. But, circumstanced as he was, she had no
motive to tenderness. There was an organic defect in her character,
which no doubt was plainly marked by its own bump in her cranium,--
the bump of philomartyrdom, it might properly be called. She had
shipwrecked her own happiness in rejecting Godfrey Holmes; but it
seemed to her to be the proper thing that a well-behaved young lady
should shipwreck her own happiness. For the last month or two she
had been tossed about by the waters and was nearly drowned. Now
there was beautiful land again close to her, and a strong pleasant
hand stretched out to save her. But though she had suffered
terribly among the waves, she still thought it wrong to be saved.
It would be so pleasant to take that hand, so sweet, so joyous, that
it surely must be wrong. That was her doctrine; and Godfrey Holmes,
though he hardly analysed the matter, partly understood that it was
so. And yet, if once she were landed on that green island, she