"Now you do yourself injustice." After a moment's hesitancy she added, "I am not quite in your mood to-day, and even Nature, as your ally, cannot make me forget or even wish to forget."
"I do not wish you to forget, but merely cease to remember for a little while. You say Nature is my ally. Listen: already the wind is beginning to sigh in the branches overhead. The sound is low and mournful, as if full of regret for the past and forebodings for the future. There is a change coming. All that I wished or could expect in you was that this serene, quiet day would give you a respite—that complete repose in which the wounded spirit is more rapidly healed and strengthened for the future."
"Have you been strengthened? Have you no fears for the future?"
"No fears, Helen. My life is strong in its negation. The man who is agitated by hopes and fears, who is doomed to disappointments, is the one who has not recognized his limitations, who has not accepted well-defined conditions."
"Hobart, I'm going to put you on your honor now. Remember, and do not answer hastily," and her gaze into his face was searching. Although quiet and perfectly self-controlled, the rich color mounted to her very brow.
"Well, Helen," he asked wonderingly.
"Imagine it possible," she continued with the same earnest gaze, "that you were a woman who has loved as I have loved, and lost as I have. The circumstances are all known, and you have only to recall them. If a man had loved you as you have loved me—"
"But, Helen, can you not believe in a love so strong that it does not ask—"
By a gesture she checked him and repeated, "But if a man had loved you as you have loved me—remember now, on your honor—would you permit him to love with no better reward than the consciousness of being a solace, a help, a sort of buffer between you and the ills of life?"
"But, Helen, I am more than that: I am your friend."