Page:Across the Zodiac (Volume 1).djvu/233

 "No, no!" she expostulated, not at all reciprocating the jesting tone in which I spoke. "If you would consent to give such a promise, it is just one of those we should wish unmade. How could I ask you to promise that I may behave as ill as I please? I dare say I shall be frightened to tears when you are angry; but I shall never wish you to retain your anger rather than vent it and forgive. The proverb says, 'Who punishes pardons; who hates awaits.' No, pray do not play with me; I am so much in earnest. I know that I don't understand where and why your thoughts and ways are so unlike ours. But—but—I thought—I fancied—you seemed to hold the tie between man and wife something more—faster—more lasting—than—our contract has made it."

"Certainly! With us it lasts for life at least; and even here, where it may be broken at pleasure, I should not have thought that, on the very bridal eve, the coldest heart could willingly look forward to its dissolution."

She was too innocent of such a thought—perhaps too much absorbed by her own purpose—to catch the hint of unjust reproach.

"Well, then," she said, with a desperate effort, in a voice that trembled between the fear of offending by presumption or exaction, and the desire to give utterance to her wish—"I want will you say that—if by that time you do not think that I have been too faulty, too undeserving—that I shall go with you when you quit this world?" And, her eagerness at last overpowering her shyness, she looked up anxiously into my face.