“Dear Lady Bell,” he continued, “during the last few months I have been looking back to those happy days we spent together; and when a man’s down with the fever he looks back with keen and wise insight into the turn of things, and knows when he was happy in the past, and with whom; and I swore that, if ever I pulled through and got back, I would ask you if you did not think we might be as happy in the future as in the past. Dear Bell, I would try and make you happy. Will you be my wife?”
Trembling in every limb, she sat silent, and with averted face. Then, suddenly and yet slowly, she turned her eyes upon him—eyes full of ineffable love and sadness.
Slowly, softly, she put her other hand in his, and smiled at him.
“You ask me to be your wife, Jack?”
“I do,” he said. “Your answer, dear Bell?”
“Is—No,” she said.
Jack started, and his eyes fell before the deep love and tenderness in hers. He would have drawn his hand away, but she still held it gently.
“Do you ask me why, Jack? I will tell you. It is because you do not love me.”
He looked up with a start, and turned pale.
Lady Bell shook her head gently.