He had paced the room while venting that speech. Turning abruptly, as he somewhat savagely enunciated those last words, he saw a smile on Mercedes’ sweet face.
“Ah!” she said, shaking her head, “you think you feel that. But——”
She looked incredulity. He and his sentiments had evidently not impressed her or depressed her spirits in the least. On the contrary, she looked far more human, far better in a physiological sense, than when she first came into the room.
“How good it is to be here!” she said, almost ecstatically, glancing above at the dingy ceiling, and around at the rows of book-shelves filled with plain bound volumes. “How much good it does me to be here!” and she heaved a sigh, a sigh of relief and contentment, sinking back in the old chair.
There was so true a ring in her voice, such a reality about her, that Dr. Paull was subdued by a sense of awe, or the beginning of awe. The situation was unnatural, yet Mercedes, more than at her ease, was making him feel as if it were not only natural that he and she should be here alone together thus, but even right and proper.
She was evidently completely at her ease. While he stood uncomfortably wondering what he should do or say next, she promptly solved the difficulty.
“Come here,” she said, not exactly with imperiousness, but certainly with the confidence of one in command. “Come here” (she drew one of the chairs near her own), “and I will tell you—all.”
He hesitated for a moment. A disagreeable feeling that some shock was awaiting him in this threatened revelation made him almost inclined to refuse to hear it, now and for always.
What if he had refused? What if he had left her there and then, unconfessed of her secret, whatever it might be? Would it have changed his after life? would it have averted his fate? Often afterwards he asked himself this question, in wonder, in awe: that question which none on earth could answer.
He did not refuse. He seated himself by her, and said: