She drew her hand suddenly from mine, and placing both hands over her eyes, she burst into convulsive sobbing. I put my arm around her, and tried to take her hands from her eyes. She turned towards me, putting both arms around my neck, laid her face, streaming with tears, on my shoulder, and cried as if her little heart would break. I sat still, supporting her, and not knowing what to do or say. Gradually her hands relaxed their clasp, and she raised her head from my shoulder, and, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief, which she tremblingly drew forth, said, with a tear-hoarse voice and a great sob:
“Oh!—John!”
“Lulie, darling,” I said, gazing at her tenderly, “have I distressed you so much, and is it painful to you to know that I love you?”
“Yes, yes, dear John, the deepest pain, because—because I cannot love you in return.”
“Not love me! Oh, Lulie! After all the years of fondest fidelity!”
“John, I do love you as the dearest friend I have on earth; as the one of all others in whom I can confide most implicitly; and because I love and esteem you so dearly your avowal of love causes me such intense pain. I could tell another I did not love him without remorse, but I know your noble heart is so truly in earnest, and its love is so sincere, that it almost kills me to turn it away and to offer only in return that bitterest of all words—friendship. But, John, by all the magnanimity of your generous nature, I beseech you not to hate me now, but hold me still as the same little Lulie of the nursery, when our hearts knew love as only childhood’s friendship.”
I sat as if in a dream, and only murmured:
“Hate you, Lulie! Never! never!”
After a long pause, I at length said:
“Lulie, darling—for you will permit me to call you so this evening, at least—the scales have fallen from my eyes, and I see so plainly what a blind, blind fool I have been to grope on in vague belief that you loved me. The fault has not been yours, for your actions have told me a thousand times that my hopes were vain; but well, indeed, is Cupid always pictured blind. And, darling, before we dismiss this subject forever, I want to thank you for the grief, and I know ‘twas real, that you felt in rejecting my proffered love. Had you heartlessly cast it aside ‘twould have crushed me too deeply for fortitude. And for our friendship, I vow before high Heaven it shall be deepened; and truer than a brother, with the devotion of an unrequited yet undying love, will I prove myself your friend.”