I had loved you from the first moment I saw you,
with a passion such as I shall never feel for any other woman. But I
knew that we were both poor; I knew that marriage in our circumstances
could only be disastrous. It would wear out your youth in servile
cares; it would cripple my energies; it might even, after a time,
change our love to disgust and aversion. And so, though I believed
myself not indifferent to you, I resolved never to speak of my love,
but to struggle against it, and root it out of my heart. You know how
differently it happened. Your changed manner, your averted looks, gave
me much pain. I feared to have offended you, or in some way forfeited
your esteem. I brought you here to ask an explanation. I said,
'Juanita, are you no longer my friend?' You know what followed; the
violence of your emotion showed me all. You remember?"
Did I not?--and was it not generous of him to remind me then?
"I saw you loved me, and the great joy of that knowledge made me forget
prudence, reason, everything. Afterwards, when alone, I tried to
justify to myself what I had done, and partially succeeded. I argued
that we were young and could wait; I dreamed, too, that my ardor could
outrun time, and grasp in youth the rewards of mature life.
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