You know, Pauline, that if you will marry me, you will have everything that you need, as much as if your uncle had left you everything." He did not look at me, but paced up and down the platform, and spoke with a thick, husky voice.
"You know it's been the object of my life, ever since I knew you, but I don't want that to influence you.

I know it is too soon, a great deal too soon.

And I would not have done it, if I could have seen anything else to do, or if you could have done without me." I must have been deadly pale, for when at last he looked at me, he started.
"I don't know how it is," he said, with a groan, "I always have to give you pain, when, Heaven knows, I'd give my life to spare you every suffering.

I can't see any other way to take care of you than the way I tell you of, and yet, I have no doubt you think me cruel, and selfish, to ask you to do it now.

It does seem so, and yet it is not.