It makes me laugh to think of your being a doctor and going back
to that country town to throw yourself away for the fancies and silly
theories of a man who has lived like a hermit. It means a true life
for both of us if you will only say you love me, or even let me ask
you again when you have thought of it more. Everybody will say I am in
the right."
"Yes, there are reasons enough for it, but there is a better reason
against it. If you love me you must help me do what is best," said
Nan. "I shall miss you and think of you more than you know when I am
away. I never shall forget all these pleasant days we have been
together. Oh George!" she cried, in a tone that thrilled him through
and through, "I hope you will be friends with me again by and by. You
will know then I have done right because it is right and will prove
itself. If it is wrong for me I couldn't really make you happy; and
over all this and beyond it something promises me and calls me for a
life that my marrying you would hinder and not help. It isn't that I
shouldn't be so happy that it is not easy to turn away even from the
thought of it; but I know that the days would come when I should see,
in a way that would make me long to die, that I had lost the true
direction of my life and had misled others beside myself. You don't
believe me, but I cannot break faith with my duty. There are many
reasons that have forbidden me to marry, and I have a certainty as
sure as the stars that the only right condition of life for me is to
follow the way that everything until now has pointed out.
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