Believe anything you want, darling.

I don't care! Only love me, John.

And if my ideas offend your people, let us leave Lockhaven; or I can keep silence, unless I should have to speak for what seems to me truth's sake." And then John tried to show her how he had wronged his people and been false to his own vows and that he dared not leave them until he had rooted out the evil his own neglect had allowed to grow up among them, and that her mere silence would not reach the root of the evil in her own soul.

And the importance of it! "Oh," he cried, once, when they had been talking until late into the night, "is not your soul's life of importance, Helen?
When I see you going down to eternal death because I have failed in my duty to you, can I satisfy myself by saying, We love one another?
Because I love you, I cannot be silent.

Oh, I have wronged you, I have not loved you enough! I have been content with the present happiness of my love,--my happiness! I had no thought of yours." So they had gone over and over the subject, until to Helen it seemed threadbare, and they sat now in the dusky library, with long stretches of silence between their words.
Alfaretta brought in the lamps.