'It might,' he assented, 'if you were with me.'
'You, with your gifts, with your talent for many things, might do so well there. Saul, turn that lamp down; the light glares, and hurts my eyes.'
He turned down the lamp; the sullen wick flickered, once, twice, thrice, and the room was in darkness.
'Let it be, Saul; don't light it. I love to talk to you in the dark. It reminds me of a time----do you remember?'
Did he remember? There came to him, in the gloom of the mean room, the memory of the time, years ago, when he first told her that he loved her. In the few brief moments that followed, after the light had gone out, the entire scene was presented to him; every word that was uttered by him and by her came to him. It was in the dark that he had told her; it was in the dark that he vowed to be faithful to her, and she to him. It seemed as if it might have been yesterday, for he held her in his arms now, as he had held her then, and he felt her heart beating against his. But the misery of the present time was too pressing to forget for more than a brief space, and he raised his head from her breast, and faced the gleams of the clear bright cold night, as they shone through the garret-window.
'If I were to tell you,' she resumed, 'that I have felt no sorrow because of the position we are in--not as regards money, though that cannot be worse, but as regards our living together, not being married--I should tell you what is not true. I have felt bitter, bitter sorrow--bitter, bitter shame. When friends fell off from me, I suffered much--when the dearest one I had, a girl of my own age, said, "Father forbids me to speak to you because you are leading a wrong life; when you are married, perhaps father will not be so hard upon you, and we may be friends again,--though never as we were, Jane! never as we were!" I turned sick, Saul, because I loved her.'
She paused a moment, and he, with a full sense of his own unworthiness, drew a little away from her. What she was saying now was all the more bitter because hitherto no word of implied reproach had passed her lips. She knew his thoughts, and in her tenderness for him, put forth her hand to draw him closer to her; but withdrew it immediately without fulfilling her purpose, as though it might make her waver.
'I said to myself, Saul knows what is right; when he is in a position he will say to me, Come, Jane; and I pictured to myself our going to some quiet church one morning, without any one knowing it but ourselves, and coming back married. But it was not to be; the part you took in the strike crushed you and kept you down. The masters were against you naturally; and I knew that as my friends had fallen off from me, so your friends and fellow workmen had fallen off from you. I blamed myself for it, for it was my counsel that caused you to desert the men as you had deserted the masters. I did not see the consequences when I spoke; I should have held my tongue.'
'Jane,' said Saul gloomily, 'you were right; I had my doubts that very night, after I had made the speech that inflamed me in the making as much as it inflamed the men in the hearing. I lost my head; no wonder they turned against me afterwards. I should have done the same by them. But in acting as I did, I acted conscientiously. What, then, did I do, when I began to feel the consequences of my own act? Sought for consolation in drink, and but for your steady, unwavering faith--but for your patient endurance, and your untiring efforts to bring me back to reason--might have found a lower depth even than that. But patient love prevailed. Death will overtake me, or I will overtake it, when I break the promise I gave you not long ago!'