“It would require a life, Lizzie, to pay all; more than a life.”
“Live for that, then; live for me, Eugene; live to see how hard I will try to improve myself, and never to discredit you.”
“My darling girl,” he replied, rallying more of his old manner than he had ever yet got together. “On the contrary, I have been thinking whether it is not the best thing I can do, to die.”
“The best thing you can do, to leave me with a broken heart?”
“I don’t mean that, my dear girl. I was not thinking of that. What I was thinking of was this. Out of your compassion for me, in this maimed and broken state, you make so much of me—you think so well of me—you love me so dearly.”
“Heaven knows I love you dearly!”
“And Heaven knows I prize it! Well. If I live, you’ll find me out.”
“I shall find out that my husband has a mine of purpose and energy, and will turn it to the best account?”
“I hope so, dearest Lizzie,” said Eugene, wistfully, and yet somewhat whimsically. “I hope so. But I can’t summon the vanity to think so. How can I think so, looking back on such a trifling wasted youth as mine! I humbly hope it; but I daren’t believe it. There is a sharp misgiving in my conscience that if I were to live, I should disappoint your good opinion and my own—and that I ought to die, my dear!”