“Do not try to think now. You cannot bear it. We will try to face what difficulties remain when you are stronger.”
She turned her eyes full on him. “You do not turn away! You know you are free.”
“Turn from the sincerity that I prize?”
“You don’t? I thought your views were exactly what would make you hate and loathe such bewilderment, and call it wilful;” there was something piteous in the way her eye sought his face.
“It was not wilful,” he said; “it came of honest truth-seeking. And, Rachel, I think the one thing is now gone that kept that honesty from finding its way.”
“Self-sufficiency!” she said with a groan; but with a sudden turn she exclaimed, “You don’t trust to my surrendering my judgment. I don’t think I am that kind of woman.”
“Nor I that kind of man,” he answered in his natural tone; then affectionately, “No, indeed I want you to aid mine.”
She lay back, wearied with the effort, and disinclined to break the stillness. There was a move at the door; Mrs. Curtis, in an agony of restless anxiety, could not help coming to see that the interview was doing no harm.
“Don’t go!” exclaimed Rachel, holding out her hand as he turned at the opening of the door. “Oh, mother!” and there was an evident sound of disappointment.
Mrs. Curtis was infinitely rejoiced to find her entrance thus inopportune. “I only wished just to be sure it was not too much,” she said.