"_No_, Lizzie! you can't let that crew loose on me just in order to
change the conversation. Come back here. I appreciate your wish to
spare my feelings, but it's wasted. We'll have this out here and now.
"I remember quite well what I said, and so do you: I said that I loved
you. I also said that I had intended to ask you to marry me as soon as
you ceased to be one of my pupils. Well, the results of Finals were
officially announced three days ago.
"Oh, I suppose I always knew what the answer would be, but I didn't
want to spend the rest of my life wondering, because I never had the
guts to ask you.
"You don't dislike me as you used to--you've forgiven me for making
you come to Russett--but you still think I'm a cold-blooded
manipulator of other people's minds and emotions. So I am; it's part
of the job.
"You're quite right to distrust me for that, though. It is the danger
of this profession, that we end up by looking on everybody and
everything as a subject for manipulation. Even in our personal lives.
I always knew that: I didn't begin to be afraid of it until I realized
I was in love with you.
"I could have made you love me, Lizzie. I could! I didn't try. Not
that I didn't want love on those terms, or any terms. But to use
professional ... tricks ... in private life, ends by destroying all
reality. I always treated you exactly as I treated my other
students--I think. But I could have made you think you loved me ...
even if I am twice your age--"
This I cannot let pass, I say "Hi! According to College rumor you
cannot be more than thirty-six; I'm twenty-three."
M'Clare says in a bemused sort of way He will be thirty-seven in a
couple of months.
I say, "I will be twenty-four next week and your arithmetic is still
screwy; and here is another datum you got wrong. I do love you. Very
much."