"It would come."

"With Mr. Barry? That is your idea of my soul with which you have been
in communion for so many years? In the first place, you think that I am
a person likely to be able to transfer myself suddenly to the first man
that comes my way?"

"Gradually you might do so,--at any rate so as to make life possible. You
will be all alone. Think what it will be to have to live all alone."

"I have thought. I do know that it would be well that you should be able
to take me with you."

"But I cannot."

"No. There is the hardship. You must leave me, and I must be alone. That
is what we have to expect. But for her sake, and for mine, we may be
left while we can be left. What would you be without me? Think of that."

"I should bear it."

"You couldn't. You'd break your heart and die. And if you can imagine my
living there, and pouring out Mr. Barry's tea for him, you must imagine
also what I should have to say to myself about you. 'He will die, of
course. But then he has come to that sort of age at which it doesn't
much signify.' Then I should go on with Mr. Barry's tea. He'd come to
kiss me when he went away, and I--should plunge a knife into him."

"Dolly!"

"Or into myself, which would be more likely. Fancy that man calling me
Dolly." Then she got up and stood behind his chair and put her arm round
his neck. "Would you like to kiss him?--or any man, for the matter of
that? There is no one else to whom my fancy strays, but I think that I
should murder them all,--or commit suicide. In the first place, I should
want my husband to be a gentleman. There are not a great many gentlemen
about."

"You are fastidious."

"Come now;--be honest; is our Mr. Barry a gentleman?" Then there was a
pause, during which she waited for a reply. "I will have an answer. I
have a right to demand an answer to that question, since you have
proposed the man to me as a husband."

"Nay, I have not proposed him."

"You have expressed a regret that I have not accepted him. Is he a
gentleman?"

"Well;--yes; I think he is."

"Mind; we are sworn, and you are bound to speak the truth. What right
has he to be a gentleman? Who was his father and who was his mother? Of
what kind were his nursery belongings? He has become an attorney, and so
have you. But has there been any one to whisper to him among his
teachings that in that profession, as in all others, there should be a
sense of high honor to guide him? He must not cheat, or do