Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/158

142 "Ah!" groaned Richard.

"But you know as well as I do that I was engaged to him years ago, and do you really expect me to play the jilt and throw him over when after so long a separation we are once more united?"

"It is not exactly that, Aurelia, I quite recognise your honourable feeling, but the question is, does he now love you as ardently as I do? And do you love him in such a way that you feel the world would be blank without him? For that is how I love you, and if you could feel that you liked me as well as you like him, not all the engagements in the world would prevent me from doing my very utmost to win you, as without you I well know my life will he wasted, or shipwrecked."

"Richard," said Aurelia solemnly, "suppose that I had been engaged to you, and you loved me as warmly as you say, and some other man came and tried his best to steal my heart away from you, what should you do?"

"I should kill him," said Dana fiercely; "no man in the world should drag you away from me if you had once promised yourself to me."