And if you feel the same about me--as you do, don't you, Mary ?--we should make each other happy." Here he paused, and seemed to be in no hurry for an answer; he seemed, indeed, to be continuing his own thoughts.
"Yes, but I'm afraid I couldn't do it," Mary said at last.

The casual and rather hurried way in which she spoke, together with the fact that she was saying the exact opposite of what he expected her to say, baffled him so much that he instinctively loosened his clasp upon her arm and she withdrew it quietly.
"You couldn't do it ?" he asked.
"No, I couldn't marry you," she replied.
"You don't care for me ?" She made no answer.
"Well, Mary," he said, with a curious laugh, "I must be an arrant fool, for I thought you did." They walked for a minute or two in silence, and suddenly he turned to her, looked at her, and exclaimed: "I don't believe you, Mary.

You're not telling me the truth." "I'm too tired to argue, Ralph," she replied, turning her head away from him.

"I ask you to believe what I say.

I can't marry you; I don't want to marry you." The voice in which she stated this was so evidently the voice of one in some extremity of anguish that Ralph had no course but to obey her.