in the dark, to do something simply because I wish it."
He looked at me as if he would fathom the depths of my soul, and my soul had never seemed to myself so deep. "To marry your cousin,—that 's all?" he said, with a strange little laugh.
"Oh, no, it 's not all: to be very kind to her as well."
"To give her plenty of money, above all?"
"You make me feel very ridiculous; but I should not make this request of you if you had not a fortune."
"She can have my money without marrying me."
"That 's absurd. How could she take your money?"
"How, then, can she take me?"
"That 's exactly what I wish to see. I told you with my own lips, weeks ago, that she would only marry a man she should love; and I may seem to contradict myself in taking up now a supposition so different. But, as I tell you, everything has changed."
"You think her capable, in other words, of marrying for money."
"For money? Is your money all there is of you? Is there a better fellow than you—is there a more perfect gentleman?"
He turned away his face at this, leaned it in his hands, and groaned. I pitied him, but I wonder now that I should n't have pitied him more; that my pity should not have checked me. But I was too full of
