The mournful sweetness and calmness of her low voice made Dr. Grey’s heart throb fiercely, and he leaned a little farther forward to study her countenance. She had rested her elbow on the carved side of the sofa, and now her cheek nestled for support in one hand, while the other toyed unconsciously with the velvet edges of the Liber Studiorum. Her dress was of some soft, shining fabric, neither satin nor silk, and its pale blue lustre shed a chill, pure light over the wan, delicate face, that was white as a bending lily.
The faint yet almost mesmeric fragrance of orange flowers and violets floated in the folds of her garments, and seemed lurking in the waves of gray hair that glistened in the bright steady glow of the red grate; and moved by one of those unaccountable impulses that sometimes decide a man’s destiny, Dr. Grey took the exquisitely beautiful hand from the book and enclosed it in both of his.
“Mrs. Gerome, you seem strangely unsuspicious of the real nature of the interest with which you have inspired me; and I owe it to you, as well as to myself, to avow the feelings that prompt me to seek your society so frequently. For some months after I met you, my professional visits afforded me only rare and tantalizing glimpses of you, but from the day of Elsie’s death, I have been conscious that my happiness is indissolubly linked with yours,—that my heart, which never before acknowledged allegiance to any woman, is—”
“For God’s sake, stop! I cannot listen to you.”
She had wrung her hand violently from his clinging fingers, and, springing to her feet, stood waving him from her, while an expression of horror came swiftly into her eyes and over her whole countenance.
Dr. Grey rose also, and though a sudden pallor spread from his lips to his temples, his calm voice did not falter.
“Is it because you can never return my love, that you so vehemently refuse to hear its avowal? Is it because your own heart—”
“It is because your love is an insult, and must not be uttered!”
She shivered as if rudely buffeted by some freezing blast, 353 and the steely glitter leaped up, like the flash of a poniard, in her large, dilating eyes.