“But I would rather not be made useful in that way,” said Esther with a momentary gleam of humor in her eyes.  “No woman wants to be shocking.  Now I have a favor to ask of you.  It is the last, and I want you to promise to grant it.”

“Not if it is to give you up.”

“I want you to make it easy for me.  I am trying to do right.  I am so weak and unhappy after all that has happened that if you are cruel to me, I shall want to die.  Be generous!  You know I am right.  Let me go quietly, and do not torture me!”

She sat down as they were talking.  He, sinking into a chair by her side, took both her hands in his, and she did not try to free them.  When she made her appeal, he answered as quietly and stubbornly as before:  “Never!  You are my wife, and my wife you will always be in my eyes.  I shall not give you up.  I shall not make it easy for you to give me up.  I shall make it as hard as I can.  I shall prevent it.  But I will do anything you like to make our engagement easy, and I came to-day with something to propose.”

No doubt, had Hazard taken her at her word and coolly walked away, Esther would have been very unpleasantly surprised.  She did not expect him to obey her first orders, nor did she want to hurry the moment of separation, or to part from him with a feeling of bitterness.  His presence always soothed and satisfied her, and she had never been calmer than now, when, with her hands in his, she waited for his new suggestion.

“I want you to do me a favor not nearly so great as the one you ask of me,” said he.  “Give me time!  Go abroad, if you think best, but let our engagement stand!  Let me come out and join you in the summer.  I am ready to see you go where you like, and stay as long as you please, if you take me with you.”

Esther reflected for a moment how she should answer.  She had thought of this plan and rejected it long before, because it seemed to her to combine all possible objections, and to get rid of none.  She knew that neither six months nor six years would make her a fit wife for Hazard, and that it would be dishonest to lure him on by any hope that she could change her nature; but it was not easy to put this in delicate words.  At length she answered simply.

“I am almost the last person in the world whom you ought to marry.  Time will only make me more unfit.”

“Should you think so,” he asked quickly, “if I were a lawyer, or a stock broker?”

She colored and withdrew her hands.  “No!” she said.  “If you were a stock broker I suppose I should be quite satisfied.  Now I am low enough, am I not?  Don’t make me feel more degraded than I am.  Let me go off alone and forget me!”

But Hazard continued to press his point with infinite patience and gentle obstinacy, until her powers of resistance were almost worn out.  Again and again the tears came into her eyes, and she would have told him gladly to take her and do what he liked with her, if she had not steeled herself with the fixed thought that in this case the whole struggle must begin again, and he would know no better what to do with her than before.  He would talk only of their love, attacking her where she could not defend herself, and took almost a pleasure in acknowledging that she was at his mercy.