“Anything but this—everything but this—Thou knowest.” Aloud, Bayard uttered the words as if he expected to be heard.
“Only this—the love of man for woman—how canst Thou understand?”
Bayard arose to his full height; he lifted his hands till they touched the low, cracked ceiling; it seemed to him as if he lifted them into illimitable heaven; as if he bore on them the greatest mystery and the mightiest woe of all the race. His lips moved; only inarticulate whispers came from them.
Then his hands fell, and his face fell into them.
Bayard went to her like a man, and at once. At an hour of the morning so early that he felt obliged to apologize for his intrusion, his sleepless face appeared at the door of her father’s cottage.
He had no more idea, even yet, what he should say to her than the Saint Michael over his study-table. He felt in himself a kind of pictorial helplessness; as if he represented something which he was incapable of expressing. His head swam. He leaned back on the bamboo chair in the parlor. Through the soft stirring of the lace curtains he watched a fleet start out, and tack across the harbor. He interested himself in the greenish-white sails of an old schooner with a new suit on. He found it impossible to think coherently of the interview which awaited him.
A hand fell on the latch of the door. He turned—ah!
“Good-morning, Professor,” said Bayard, rising manfully. His pale face, if possible, turned a shade whiter. It seemed to him the fitting sequel to his weakness that he should be called to account by the girl’s father. “I have deserved it,” he thought.