“I should owe myself a lifetime’s penance with the discipline,” John on a solemn tone replied, hungrily looking at her cheek, at the little tendrils of dark hair about her brow.  “God knows what I should owe to her.”

“You would owe it to her,” said Maria Dolores, always facing away, “to tell her your love straightforwardly, and to ask her to marry you.”

John thrilled, John ached.  His blue eyes burned upon her.  “What else do you think I dream of, night and day?  But how could I, with honour?  You know my poverty,” he groaned.

“But if she has enough, more than enough, for two?” softly urged Maria Dolores.

“Ah, that’s the worst of it,” cried he.  “If we were equals in penury, if she had nothing, then I might honourably ask her, and we could live on herbs together in a garret, and I could keep her respect and my own.  Oh, garret-paradise!  But to marry a woman who is rich, to live in luxury with her, and to try to look unconscious while she pays the bills,—­she would despise me, I should abhor myself.”

“Why should she despise you?” asked Maria Dolores.  “The possession of wealth is a mere accident.  If people are married and love each other, I can’t see that it matters an atom whether their money belonged in the first place to the man or to the woman,—­it would belong henceforward to them both equally.”

“That is a very generous way of looking at it, but it is a woman’s way.  No decent man could accept it,” said John.

“Up to a certain point,” said Maria Dolores, slowly, “I understand your scruples.  I understand that a poor man might feel that he would not like to make the advances, if the woman he loved was rich.  But suppose the woman loved him, and knew that he loved her, and knew that it was only his poverty which held him back, then she might make the advances.  She might put aside her pride, and go halfway to meet him, and to remove his difficulties and embarrassments.  If, after that, he still did not ask her, I think his scruples would have become mere vanity,—­I think it would show that he cared more for his mere vanity than for her happiness.”

Her voice died out.  John could see that her lip quivered a little.  His throat was dry.  The pulses were pounding in his temples.  His brain was all a confusion.  He hardly knew what had befallen him, he hardly knew what she had said.  He only knew that there was a great ball of fire in his breast, and that the pain of it was half an immeasurable joy.

“God forgive me,” the absurd and exaggerated stickler for the dignity of his sex wildly cried.  “God knows how I love her, how I care for her happiness.  But to go to her empty-handed,—­but to put myself in the position of being kept by a woman,—­God knows how impossible it is.”

Maria Dolores stood up, still looking away from him.

“Well, let us hope,” she said, changing her tone to one of unconcerned detachment, “that we have been discussing baseless suppositions.  Let us hope that her heart is quite untouched.  And for both your sakes,” she concluded, her head in the air, “let us hope that you and she will never meet again.  Good-bye.”