Can he read his fate in her eyes? Do those gentle tones echo his sentence? It seems so.
“No,” he replies, with all the vehemence of a foregone cause—the passion of shattered hope. “No—not until you have heard everything.” His arms are around her now, and she cannot stir from the spot if she would, but she does not try. “Listen,” he goes on, speaking in a low, quick, eager voice. “Since the very first day I saw you I have loved you as no woman was ever yet loved. From the first minute, from the first glance I caught of you that day you flashed upon me like an angel of light. Stop. It is true, so help me God, every word of it,”—for she started as if in surprise. “From the very first moment. Couldn’t you see it? Couldn’t you even see it that first day?”
“No—I could not,” is her earnest answer. “I vow to you I could not. I had no idea of—of anything of the kind. I would have gone away from here at once—anywhere—sooner than have wrecked your peace! And now this is what I have done. Heaven knows I never intended it!”
The sweet eyes are brimming with tears as she stands with bent head before him, and Claverton is convulsed with a wild, helpless yearning. The first thought is to comfort her.
“Don’t I know that? Heavens! The intention is a mere superfluity. One has only to see you to love you. Can the sun help shining?”
She looks up at him. “Then you believe me? It would be dreadful to me—the thought that you could imagine I had trifled with you.”
“I could not think so. It would be an impossibility,” replies he. For the moment he almost forgets the death blow which she has dealt to his own hopes, in his great eagerness to set her at ease with herself, to reassure her. Forgets? No. Rather he rises above himself.
“Listen, darling. Every day since you came here I have only seemed to live when with you. I have never been a fraction of a moment away from you if I could possibly have been near you. Night after night through I have lain awake, restlessly longing for morning that I might look upon you again, and then when I have left you to go about the day’s work, how I have treasured up the last glance of those dear eyes, the last ring of that sweet voice, till the very air seemed all sunshine and music. Lilian, darling, I never can live again without you, and—by God, I never will.”
He pauses; his voice failing him. The expression of his face as he hangs upon her reply is terrible to behold. It might be compared to that worn by a convicted murderer when the return of the jury to give their verdict is announced. And this is the man who, at a comparatively early age, has looked upon many a harrowing scene of human suffering unmoved, who has thoroughly steeled himself against all the tenderer feelings of nature, ever presenting a cold philosophical front to the fortunes, good or ill, of himself or of his neighbours. Who would know him standing there, ghastly white, the whole of his being shaken to the very core? Yet but a few days have wrought this change.
She makes no answer at first, for she is silently weeping. Then with an effort she looks at him, and her face wears an expression of unutterable sadness.