"You love me!" he exclaimed for the third time.
"And now, dear, we must talk plainly and calmly. You have seen what my family is."
"I don't know, Mary, that I can make you understand at all," began Bennington helplessly. "I can't express it even to myself. Our people are so different. My training has been so different. All this sort of thing means so much to us, and so little to you."
"I know exactly," she interrupted. "I have read, and I have lived East. I can appreciate just how it is. See if I can not read your thoughts. My family is uneducated. If it becomes your family, your own parents will be more than grieved, and your friends will have little to do with you. You have also duties toward your family, _as_ a family. Is that it?"
"Yes, that _is_ it," answered he, "but there are so many things it does not say. It seems to me it has come to be a horrible dilemma with me. If I do what I am afraid is my duty to my family and my people, I will be unhappy without you forever. And if I follow my heart, then it seems to me I will wrong myself, and will be unhappy that way. It seems a choice of just in what manner I will be miserable!" he ended with a ghastly laugh.
"And which is the most worth while?" she asked in a still voice.
"I don't know, I don't know!" he cried miserably. "I must think."
He looked out straight ahead of him for some time. "Whichever way I decide," he said after a little, "I want you to know this, Mary: I love you, and I always will love you, and the fact that I choose my duty, if I do, is only that if I did not, I would not consider myself worthy even to look at you." A silence fell on them again.
"I can not live West," said he again, as though he had been arguing this point in his mind and had just reached the conclusion of it. "My life is East; I never knew it until now." He hesitated. "Would you--that is, could you--I mean, would your family have to live East too?"
She caught his meaning and drew herself up, with a little pride in the movement.
"Wherever I go, whatever I do, my people must be free to go or do. You have your duty to your family. I have my duty to mine!"
He bowed his head quietly in assent. She looked at the struggle depicted in the lines of his face with eyes in which, strangely enough, was much pity, but no unhappiness or doubt. Could it be that she was so sure of the result?