The temptation was strong to reply with an affirmative.  If she believed his father to be utterly irreconcilable, there could be no excuse for lingering; yet his nobler self prevailed, to her no word of falseness.

’I have told you the truth.  His opposition is temporary.  When you are my wife he will be to you as to any wife I could have chosen, I am convinced of it.’

’Then more than ever I entreat you to wait, only till his return to England.  If you fail then, I will resist no longer.  Show him this much respect, dearest; join him abroad now; let him see that you desire his kindness.  Is he not disappointed that you mean to break off your career at Oxford?  Why should you do that?  You promised me—­did you not promise me, Wilfrid, that you would go on to the end?’

’I cannot!  I have no longer the calmness, no longer the old ambitions,—­how trivial they were!’

’And yet there will come a day when you will regret that you left your course unfinished, just because you fell in love with a foolish girl.’

’Do not speak like that, Emily; I hate that way of regarding love!  My passion for you is henceforth my life; if it is trifling, so is my whole being, my whole existence.  There is no sacrifice possible for me that I should ever regret.  Our love is what we choose to make it.  Regard it as a foolish pastime, and we are no better than the vulgar crowd—­we know how they speak of it.  What detestable thoughts your words brought to my mind!  Have you not heard men and women, those who have outlived such glimpses of high things as nature ever sent them, making a jest of love in young lives, treating it, from the height of their wisdom forsooth, as a silly dream of boys and girls?  If we ever live to speak or think like that, it will indeed be time to have done with the world.  Even as I love you now, my heart’s darling, I shall love you when years of intimacy are like some happy journey behind us, and on into the very portal of death.  Regret!  How paltry all will seem that was not of the essence of our love!  And who knows how short our time may be?  When the end comes, will it be easy to bear, the thought that we lost one day, one moment of union, out of respect for idle prejudices which vanish as soon as they find themselves ineffectual?  Will not the longest life be all too short for us?’

‘Forgive me the words, dear.  Love is no less sacred to me.’

Her senses were playing the traitor; or—­which you will—­were seconding love’s triumph.

‘I shall come home with you now,’ he said.  ‘You will let me?’

Why was he not content to win her promise?  This proposal, by reminding her most strongly of the inevitable difficulties her marriage would entail, forced her again into resistance.

’Not now, Wilfrid.  I have not said a word of this; I must prepare them for it.’

‘You have not spoken of me?’

‘I would not do so till I—­till everything was more certain.’