I know this, that if I might possibly succeed, I should be a very happy man.

Good-bye, Miss Rowley." She took his offered hand and pressed it so warmly, that had he not been manly and big-hearted, he would have taken such pressure as a sign that she wished him to ask her again.

But such was his nature.
"God bless you," he said, "and make you happy, whatever you may choose to do." Then he left her, and she heard him walk down the stairs with heavy slow steps, and she thought that she could perceive from the sound that he was sad at heart, but that he was resolved not to show his sadness outwardly.
When she was alone she began to think in earnest of what she had done.

If the reader were told that she regretted the decision which she had been forced to make so rapidly, a wrong impression would be given of the condition of her thoughts.

But there came upon her suddenly a strange capacity for counting up and making a mental inventory of all that might have been hers.