... Bathsheba, you are
the first woman of any shade or nature that I have ever
looked at to love, and it is the having been so near
claiming you for my own that makes this denial so hard
to bear. How nearly you promised me! But I don't
speak now to move your heart, and make you grieve
because of my pain; it is no use, that. I must bear it;
my pain would get no less by paining you."
"But I do pity you -- deeply -- O so deeply!" she
earnestly said.
"Do no such thing -- do no such thing. Your dear
love, Bathsheba, is such a vast thing beside your pity,
that the loss of your pity as well as your love is no great
addition to my sorrow, nor does the gain of your pity
make it sensibly less. O sweet -- how dearly you
spoke to me behind the spear-bed at the washing-pool,
and in the barn at the shearing, and that dearest last
time in the evening at your home! Where are your
pleasant words all gone -- your earnest hope to be able
to love me? Where is your firm conviction that you
would get to care for me very much? Really forgotten?
-- really?"
She checked emotion, looked him quietly and clearly
in the face, and said in her low, firm voice, " Mr.
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