"Would you have liked me to have done so by you, if you had been in
my place?"
Rose twitched herself about. "You can't expect him never to marry
anybody because he isn't going to marry you," she said, defiantly.
"I don't--I am not quite so selfish as that. But he won't ever marry
anybody he don't like because she follows him up, and I don't see how
that alters what you've done."
Rose began to walk away. Charlotte stood still, but she raised her
voice. "I am not very happy," said she, "and I sha'n't be happy my
whole life, but I wouldn't change places with you. You've lowered
yourself, and that's worse than any unhappiness."
Rose fled away in the darkness without another word, and Charlotte
crossed the road to go to her Aunt Sylvia's.
Rose, as she went on, felt as if all her dreams were dying within
her; a dull vision of the next morning when she should awake without
them weighed upon her. She had a childish sense of shame and remorse,
and a conviction of the truth of Charlotte's words. And yet she had
an injured and bewildered feeling, as if somewhere in this terrible
nature, at whose mercy she was, there was some excuse for her.
Rose was nearly home when she began to meet the people coming from
meeting. She kept close to the wall, and scudded along swiftly that
no one might recognize her. All at once a young man whom she had
passed turned and walked along by her side, making a shy clutch at
her arm.
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