I waited until I saw
she was not going to speak. Then I said: "What time will you have dinner?"
But my face must have been expressing some of the joy and gratitude that
filled me. "She has chosen!" I was saying to myself over and over.
"Whenever you usually have it," she replied, without looking up.
"At seven o'clock, then. You had better tell Sanders."
I rang for him and went into my little smoking-room. She had resisted her
parents' final appeal to her to return to them. She had cast in her lot
with me. "The rest can be left to time," said I to myself. And, reviewing
all that had happened, I let a wild hope send tenacious roots deep into me.
How often ignorance is a blessing; how often knowledge would make the step
falter and the heart quail!
XXIV
BLACKLOCK ATTENDS FAMILY PRAYERS
During dinner I bore the whole burden of conversation--though burden I did
not find it. Like most close-mouthed men, I am extremely talkative. Silence
sets people to wondering and prying; he hides his secrets best who hides
them at the bottom of a river of words. If my spirits are high, I often
talk aloud to myself when there is no one convenient. And how could my
spirits be anything but high, with her sitting there opposite me, mine,
mine for better or for worse, through good and evil report--my wife!
She was only formally responsive, reluctant and brief in answers,
volunteering nothing.
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