She could not speak with that choking sensation in her throat, so she walked on in silence.
Her companion looked at her and perceived the tears glistening in her downcast eyes. The doctor had, of late, found himself constantly thinking tenderly of this lonely, sad-looking girl, whose only companion was the frivolous Susan. He had, to a certain extent, guessed the cause of her sorrow, living as she did with the half-insane atheist and revolutionist he knew Mrs. King to be. He felt a great pity for the beautiful unprotected creature, in whom he saw such sweet possibilities of love and all the graces and good qualities of woman. The love that was coming to him was deep and strong and fierce as was his nature, and the girl was beginning to divine this.
No wonder that she was filled with dread when she knew that she had inspired such a feeling in such a man; for there lay that terrible secret between them, a secret whose nature he had so little suspected, when she warned him that he would loathe her, did he know it. She found that she was on the edge of a precipice, and felt a sick dizziness to see it, but also a painful fascination.
They walked on together through the dreamy November haze—both feeling as in a dream—without speaking, but each in some strange manner vaguely conscious of the spirit of the other's thought, of a close sympathy that was fast drawing them together. It was as if their hearts beat, their souls sung, in unison, to some awful music from another sphere. The streets and the people were no longer with them.
So it was, that when at last he spoke, the words were expected by her. She seemed to have felt their meaning before they came. They had been led up to by the unspoken emotions of either.
"Oh, Miss King, if you could only confide in me, and make me your friend! I would die, to be able to drive away that cloud from your mind, if I could only see you happy and smiling.... All that beautiful youth of yours, with its sweet possibilities, being destroyed by these dark phantoms! Oh, Mary, for God's sake, trust in me! Have you guessed how I love you? You must have done so. You fill all my thoughts. You know that you are everything in the world to me.... Oh, my sweet! my sweet! that I could make you throw yourself on my love. I believe I would make you happy. I would understand you, Mary, and we would make all your sadness go. We would go right away from the streets for a time, and walk through the green fields hand in hand like children again. In the bright, pure country we should drive all these phantoms right away; our human love would drive them right away. Mary! Mary!—" and he stopped and seized her two hands in his, carried away by his emotion.
They were standing by the railings of the garden of a deserted square, and the rays of a lamp fell full on her pale face.
He had raised an image of wonderful joys to her mind—but, oh! so impossible—so impossible!
She trembled in his grasp. She dared not raise her eyes to meet his.