“Is it not?” she asked, with a smile. “But how can you tell that, when you know nothing of my nature?”
“Do you think I know nothing of your nature?” he asked, smiling also. “If I had time, and you did not consider me too presumptuous, I might prove the contrary, for you forget all that you showed me once—all the courage, the unselfishness, the humility. But I do not forget. And has no one ever told you that you carry your soul on your lips and your heart in your eyes?”
“No,” she replied, “I do not remember that any one ever told me so before—at least not exactly. But perhaps Fanny means the same thing when she tells me that my face is ‘ridiculously transparent.’”
“It is only a different way of stating the same thing,” said Kyrle, and then they both laughed.
“But seriously,” said he, after a moment, conscious of a very pleasant sense of camaraderie with this beautiful companion, “have you no idea how you revealed yourself to me at that last meeting of ours under the orange trees? How I can see you this moment, as you were then—such a delicate, childlike creature, but with a strength of resolution against which I arrayed all my strength in vain! And then, when you opened your heart and told me the sad story of your life, and how it was gratitude which made you so resolute—do you think I could ever forget anything so touching? Many a time, in the years which have passed since then, I have thought of that scene, and said to myself, ‘God bless that child wherever she may be, for she has a heart as tender as it is brave!’”
Something in his voice told her that he was speaking genuinely, without the least insincerity or thought of effect, and she could not but give him a grateful glance from the same dark eyes which had impressed him with their wonderful power of expression on the occasion of which he spoke. “You are very kind,” she said, trying to speak lightly, “to have remembered an obstinate child so long!”
“You were certainly very obstinate,” he said; “but how brave you were! To think of your having had the courage to go alone to the sea wall that night, and to think of the selfishness and cowardice that sent you! Pardon me for asking the question, but has no opportunity ever occurred for you to set yourself right in that matter?”
She shook her head. “How could it?” she asked. “Fanny has never had the courage to tell her husband the truth. But nothing disagreeable has arisen from it—to me, I mean,” she added, a little hurriedly. “You know you were afraid of that.”
“Yes,” he said. “I am very glad that you have never been annoyed; still, it is a shame that such a belief should be in the mind of any one with regard to you.”
He spoke out, quickly and hotly, the indignation that on this subject was always within him and ready to find expression; but he was sorry the next moment for the words when he saw a swift blush rise into her face, as with the sudden realization of what the belief was to which he alluded. Angry with himself, he went on hastily: