me, I will marry someone else. There are more fish in the sea than come out of it."
She rose to her feet and stood back, and looked at him with wide open eyes. "George, this is a cruel jest. It should not be uttered."
"It is no jest, but sober earnest," he answered sullenly. "Glory! I don't see why I should not marry as well as you."
"Oh, George! George! do not speak to me in this way. I have been true to you, and you have promised to be true to me."
"Conditionally," he interjected.
"You could not do it. You could not take another woman to your heart. George! you talk of impossibilities.
"Indeed! Do you think that another girl would not have me? If so, you are mistaken."
"You could not do it," she persisted. "If you were to, it would not be the George I knew and loved and lost, but another. The George I knew and loved and lost was true to me as I to him; he could no more take another to his heart than can I."
"But you have. Glory."
"I have not. Elijah sits nowhere near my heart."
"I do not believe it. If he did not, you would shake him off without another thought and follow me."
"Do you not see," she cried passionately, holding out both her palms, and trembling with her vehemence, "that I cannot? I, by my own act, have made him helpless, and would you have me desert him in his helplessness? I cannot do it. There is something in here, in my bosom, I know not what it is, but it will not let me. If I were to go against that I should never be at ease."
"You are not at ease now."
"That would be different. I have my sorrow now, but my distress then would be of another sort and utterly unendurable. I cannot explain myself. George! you ought to understand me. If I were to say these words to Elijah he would see through my heart at once, and all the thoughts in it would be visible to him as painted figures in a church window. To you they seem all broken and jumbled and meaningless."
