Perhaps I used language which I
should not have used. Then you told me that I could not be your
wife;--and I thought you were right, quite right."
"I was wrong, quite wrong," he said impetuously. "So wrong, that I
can never forgive myself, if you do not relent. I was such a fool,
that I cannot forgive myself my folly. I had known before that I
could not live without you; and when you were mine, I threw you away
for an angry word."
"It was not an angry word," she said.
"Say it again, and let me have another chance to answer it."
"I think I said that idleness was not,--respectable, or something
like that, taken out of a copy-book probably. But you are a man who
do not like rebukes, even out of copy-books. A man so thin-skinned
as you are must choose for himself a wife with a softer tongue than
mine."
"I will choose none other!" he said. But still he was savage in his
tone and in his gestures. "I made my choice long since, as you know
well enough. I do not change easily. I cannot change in this. Violet,
say that you will be my wife once more, and I will swear to work for
you like a coal-heaver."
"My wish is that my husband,--should I ever have one,--should work,
not exactly as a coal-heaver."
"Come, Violet," he said,--and now the look of savagery departed from
him, and there came a smile over his face, which, however, had in it
more of sadness than of hope or joy,--"treat me fairly,--or rather,
treat me generously if you can.
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