“I did not think that so many days would pass before I should see you; but now that you have had time to reflect, I hope your feelings have softened towards me.”

“You mistake, if you suppose that giving me time for reflection has produced any such change.”

“Then, pray, forget the past altogether.”

“I cannot forget.”

“If your memory must be busy, pray, go back to the pleasanter days of our acquaintance.”

“I remember the days you speak of; I shall never forget them; but it is a happiness that is dead and buried.”

“Love will make it live again.”

“It is hard to recognize love when it comes like Lazarus from the tomb.”

“Still we don’t read that the friends of Lazarus were displeased with his return and wished him back to his grave-clothes.”

“You can turn the comparison as you choose; but it is not necessary that an illustration should be perfect in every respect; if one catches a gleam of resemblance, it is enough.”

The perfect command of her faculties, and the deliberate way in which she sustained her part in the conversation, thus far, were sufficiently disheartening to Greenleaf.  He longed to change the tone, but feared to lose all by any rapid advance.  He answered deprecatingly,—­“But all this intellectual fencing, my dear Alice, is useless.  Love is not a spark to be struck out by the collision of arguments; I shall in vain try to reason you into affection for me.  I have already said all I can say by way of apology for what I have done.  If there yet lingers any particle of regard for me in your heart, I would fain revive it.  If it is your pride that withstands me, I pray you consider whether it is well to make us both unhappy in order to maintain so poor a triumph.  I am already conquered, and throw myself upon your generosity.”

“You would put me in the wrong, then, and ascribe my refusal to an ungenerous pride?  Is it generous in you to do so?  Have you the right to place such a construction upon my conduct?  I appeal to you in return.  Remember, it is you who are responsible for this painful interview.  I never sought you to cover you with reproaches.  You force me to say what I would gladly leave in silence.”

“Forgive me, Alice, if I wrong you; but my heart clings to you and will not be repulsed.  I would fain believe, that, beneath all your natural resentment, there yet survives some portion of the love you once bore to me.  If it were the first time I had ever approached you, a sense of delicacy, to say nothing of my own self-respect, would have prevented my importuning you in this way.  But my fault has given me warrant to be bold, and if you finally cast me off,—­but that is what I won’t anticipate; I can’t give you up.  You once loved me,—­and am I not the same?”

“No, not the same; or, rather, you have proved to be not what I thought.”