“Forgive me! I have no right to insist—I forgot—I have none to anything. I have no right to hear—to see—anything. God have mercy upon me!”
He put out his shaking hand, and gently covered with it her uplifted eyes; veiling from his own gaze the most sacred sight on earth. It was a beautiful act, and so delicately done that Helen felt as if a spirit had touched her.
But when she came to herself, and gave him her eyes again, with their accustomed, calm, feminine disguise, she saw no spirit, but the passionate face of a man who loved her and despaired of her as she had seen no man love or despair before.
“I cannot even ask for the chance to try,” he cried. “I am as much shut out as a beggar in the street. I ought to be as dumb before you as the thousand-years’ dead! And yet, God help me—I am a live man and I love you. I have no right to seek a right—I wrong you and myself by every word I say, by every moment I spend in your presence. Good-by!” he said with cruel abruptness, holding out his hand.
Helen did not take it. She turned her back to the great arc, and looked out to sea. Her figure, in its hooded cloak, stood strongly against the cold, white light. The tide rose upon the deserted beach insistently. The breakers roared on the distant shore.
“You must see—you must understand,” he groaned. “I am a poor man—poorer than you ever took the trouble to think. A heretic, unpopular, out of the world, an obscure, struggling fellow, slighted, forgotten—no friends but a handful of fishermen and drunkards—and living on—what do you suppose my salary is?”
“It never occurred to me to suppose,” said Helen, lifting her head proudly.
“Five hundred dollars a year; to be collected if possible, to be dispensed with if necessary.”
He jerked the words out bitterly. His fancy, with terrible distinctness, took forbidden photographs by flashlight. He saw this daughter of conventional Cesarea, this child of ease and indulgence, living at Mrs. Granite’s, boarding on prunes and green tea. He saw her trying to shake down the coal fire on a January day, while he was out making parish calls; sitting in the bony rocking-chair with the turkey-red cushion, beside the screen where the paper Cupid forever tasted uneaten fruit. He saw the severe Saint Michael looking down from the wall on that young, warm woman-creature. He saw her sweep across the old, darned carpet in her purple robes, with gold at her throat and wrists. He saw her lift her soft arms. He saw—Now he put his hands before his own eyes.