“Zulima, what is it that troubles you? Oh, if you only knew, if you could but guess, how—how it wrings my heart to see you thus! What has the man been saying to wound you?”
“To wound me?” repeated Zulima, recovering from the sort of dream into which his voice had cast her, and drawing her hand away. “Oh, everybody says things to wound me, I think!”
“But I never have.”
“No, I believe not,” replied Zulima, listlessly; “I believe not.”
“And never will,” urged the young man, regarding her with a look of deep tenderness.
“I don’t know,” was the faint reply, and Zulima’s face fell back on her folded arms again.
The young man arose and began to pace up and down the room; many a change passed over his features meanwhile, and he cast his eye from time to time upon the motionless figure of Zulima, with an expression that revealed all the hidden love, the wild devotion with which he regarded her. He sat down again and took her passive hand. She did not attempt to withdraw it. She did not even seem to know that it was in his.
“Do you know how I love you—how, with my whole life and strength, I worship you, Zulima?” he said. “There is nothing on earth that I would not do, could it give you a moment’s happiness.”
Zulima slowly unfolded her arms, and lifting her head, looked earnestly in his face with her eyes. She did not seem to understand him.
“Oh, you must have seen how I love you,” he said passionately.