The head was still bent down, the tears still falling, and the bosom swelling with its sobs.
“Dear Florence! Dearest Florence! whom I called so in my thoughts before I could consider how presumptuous and wild it was. One last time let me call you by your own dear name, and touch this gentle hand in token of your sisterly forgetfulness of what I have said.”
She raised her head, and spoke to him with such a solemn sweetness in her eyes; with such a calm, bright, placid smile shining on him through her tears; with such a low, soft tremble in her frame and voice; that the innermost chords of his heart were touched, and his sight was dim as he listened.
“No, Walter, I cannot forget it. I would not forget it, for the world. Are you—are you very poor?”
“I am but a wanderer,” said Walter, “making voyages to live, across the sea. That is my calling now.”
“Are you soon going away again, Walter?”
“Very soon.”
She sat looking at him for a moment; then timidly put her trembling hand in his.
“If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world’s end without fear. I can give up nothing for you—I have nothing to resign, and no one to forsake; but all my love and life shall be devoted to you, and with my last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense and memory left.”
He caught her to his heart, and laid her cheek against his own, and now, no more repulsed, no more forlorn, she wept indeed, upon the breast of her dear lover.