"But," she protested, piteously, struggling to control her voice, "did you not say that it was all a mistake on your part—that you wished it all undone? What else could I understand?"
"My poor child!" said Darrell, tenderly; then reaching over and possessing himself of one of her hands, he continued, gravely:
"The mistake was mine in that I ever allowed myself to think of loving you when love is not for me. I have no right, Kathie, to love you, or any other woman, as I am now. I did not know until last night that I did love you. Then it came upon me like a revelation,—a revelation so overwhelming that it swept all else before it. You, and you alone, filled my thoughts. Wherever I was, I saw you, heard you, and you only. Again and again in imagination I clasped you to my breast, I felt your kisses on my lips,—just as I afterwards felt them in reality."
He paused a moment and dropped the hand he had taken. Under cover of the shadows Kate's tears were falling unchecked; one, falling on Darrell's hand, had warned him that there must be no weakening, no softening.
His voice was almost stern as he resumed. "For those few hours I forgot that I was a being apart from the rest of the world, exiled to darkness and oblivion; forgot the obligations to myself and to others which my own condition imposes upon me. But the dream passed; I awoke to a realization of what I had done, and whatever I have suffered since is but the just penalty of my folly. The worst of all is that I have involved you in needless suffering; I have won your love only to have to put it aside—to renounce it. But even this is better—far better than to allow your young life to come one step farther within the clouds
that envelop my own. Do you understand me now, Kathie?"
"Yes," she replied, calmly; "I understand it from your view, as it looks to you."
"But is not that the only view?"
She did not speak at once, and when she did it was with a peculiar deliberation.