She did not shrink from him; the words evidently had little meaning for her. He must have been blind indeed not to see the girl's heart was as void and innocent of all love as the heart of a dreaming child.
"You must be my wife," he repeated. "I love you better than anything else in the wide world."
She did not look particularly happy or delighted.
"You shall go away from this dull gloomy spot," he said; "I will take you to some sunny, far-off city, where the hours have golden wings and are like minutes—where every breath of wind is a fragrant sigh—where the air is filled with music, and the speech of the people is song. You will behold the grandest pictures, the finest statues, the noblest edifices in the world. You shall not know night from day, nor summer from winter, because everything shall be so happy for you."
The indifference and weariness fell from her face as a mask. She clasped her hands in triumph, her eyes brightened, her beautiful face beamed with joy.
"Oh, Claude, that will be delightful! When shall it be?"
"So soon as you are my wife, sweet. Do you not long to come with me and be dressed like a lovely young queen, in flowers, and go to balls that will make you think of fairyland? You shall go to the opera to hear the world's greatest singers; you shall never complain of dulness or weariness again."
The expression of happiness that came over her face was wonderful to see.
"I cannot realize it," she said, with a deep sigh of relief and content. "The sky looks fairer already. I can imagine how bright this world is to those who are happy. You do not know how I have longed for some share of its happiness, Claude. All my heart used to cry out for warmth and love, for youth and life. In that dull, gloomy house I have pined away. See, I am as thirsty to enjoy life as the deer on a hot day is to enjoy a running stream. It would be cruel to catch that little bird swinging on the boughs and singing so sweetly—it would be cruel to catch that bright bird, to put it in a narrow cage, and to place the cage in a dark, dull room, where never a gleam of sunshine could cheer it—but it is a thousand times more cruel to shut me up in that gloomy house like a prison, with people who are too old to understand what youth is like."
"It is cruel," he assented; and then a silence fell over them, broken only by the whispering of the wind.