He looks sterner than one would have conceived possible for him; Miss Massereene evidently thinks him inhumanly so.
"Don't speak to me like that," she says, with quivering lips. "You should not. I have made a vow not to disclose my secret to you of all people, and would you have me break it?"
"But why?" impatiently.
"Because—have I not told you already?—because"—with a little dry sob—"I love you so dearly that to encourage thoughts of you would unfit me for my work. And it is partly for your own sake I do it, for something tells me we shall never marry each other; and why should you spend your life dreaming of a shadow?"
"It is the cruelest resolution a woman ever formed," replies he, ignoring as beneath notice the latter part of her speech, and, putting away her hands, takes once more to his irritable promenade up and down the room.
Molly is crying, silently, exhaustedly. "My burden is too heavy for me," she murmurs, faintly.
"Then why not let me help you to bear it?"
"If it will comfort you, Teddy"—brokenly—"I will give in so far as to promise to write to you in six months. I ask you to wait till then. Is it too long? If so, remember you are free—believe me it will be better so—and I perhaps shall be happier in the thought——" And here incontinently she breaks down.
"Don't," says Luttrell, hurriedly, whose heart grows faint within him at the sight of her distress. "Molly, I give in. I am satisfied with your last promise. I shall wait forever, if that will please you. Who am I, that I should add one tear to the many you have already shed? Forgive me, my own love."
"Yes, but do not say anything more to me to-day; I am tired," says Molly, submitting to his caresses, though still a little sore at heart.