"I've no right to ask you to exchange what they offer you for a life like my mother's." Fulness of emotion lent dignity to his words, but if he had shown indifference instead of tenderness, it would probably have served him better.

She was so sure of Abel--so ready to accept as a matter of course the fact that she could rely on him.
"So you want it to be all over between us ?" he asked.
"I don't want to be tied--I don't think I ought to be." Her tone was firm, but she plucked nervously at a bit of crape on the sleeve of Mrs.
Gay's gown.
"Perhaps you're right," he replied quietly.

He had spoken in a stiff and constrained manner, with little show of his suffering, yet all the while he felt that a band of iron was fastened across his brain, and the physical effect of this pressure was almost unendurable.

He wanted to ease his swollen heart by some passionate outburst, but an obstinate instinct, which was beyond his control, prevented his making a ridiculous display of his emotion.

The desire to curse aloud, to hurl defiant things at a personal deity, was battling within him, but instead of yielding to it he merely repeated: "I reckon you're right--it wouldn't be fair to you in the end." "I hope you haven't any hard feeling toward me," she said presently, sweetly commonplace.
"Oh no, I haven't any hard feeling.