But this seemed too scornful and cold-hearted.  “Oh, my love is only worth that to you,” the lover said.  “You shall know better what it means.  I don’t want you for my friend, but for my own to keep and to have.  It makes me laugh to think of your being a doctor and going back to that country town to throw yourself away for the fancies and silly theories of a man who has lived like a hermit.  It means a true life for both of us if you will only say you love me, or even let me ask you again when you have thought of it more.  Everybody will say I am in the right.”

“Yes, there are reasons enough for it, but there is a better reason against it.  If you love me you must help me do what is best,” said Nan.  “I shall miss you and think of you more than you know when I am away.  I never shall forget all these pleasant days we have been together.  Oh George!” she cried, in a tone that thrilled him through and through, “I hope you will be friends with me again by and by.  You will know then I have done right because it is right and will prove itself.  If it is wrong for me I couldn’t really make you happy; and over all this and beyond it something promises me and calls me for a life that my marrying you would hinder and not help.  It isn’t that I shouldn’t be so happy that it is not easy to turn away even from the thought of it; but I know that the days would come when I should see, in a way that would make me long to die, that I had lost the true direction of my life and had misled others beside myself.  You don’t believe me, but I cannot break faith with my duty.  There are many reasons that have forbidden me to marry, and I have a certainty as sure as the stars that the only right condition of life for me is to follow the way that everything until now has pointed out.  The great gain and purpose of my being alive is there; and I must not mind the blessings that I shall have to do without.”

He made a gesture of impatience and tried to interrupt her, but she said quickly, as if to prevent his speaking:  “Listen to me.  I can’t help speaking plainly.  I would not have come with you this afternoon, only I wished to make you understand me entirely.  I have never since I can remember thought of myself and my life in any way but unmarried,—­going on alone to the work I am fit to do.  I do care for you.  I have been greatly surprised and shaken because I found how strongly something in me has taken your part, and shown me the possibility of happiness in a quiet life that should centre itself in one man’s love, and within the walls of his home.  But something tells me all the time that I could not marry the whole of myself as most women can; there is a great share of my life which could not have its way, and could only hide itself and be sorry.  I know better and better that most women are made for another sort of existence, but by and by I must do my part in my own way to make many homes happy instead of one; to free them from pain, and teach grown people and little