“You know that I love you, Adelaide?”
“Yes, I know it.”
“That I have loved you from the first moment that I saw you—desperately, hopelessly?”
“Thank you for saying that, Professor Waite; it would have been wicked in me to have given you hope. I never meant to do so. I am glad that you have not misunderstood me. And since you give me credit for not encouraging you, rather for striving to keep you from this avowal, why have you spoken? I would so gladly have spared you the pain, the humiliation of a refusal.”
“You have not allowed me to finish what I was saying. I loved you at first hopelessly for I saw that you scorned me; but lately you have not scorned me. You have pitied me; you have been very kind and considerate; your manner has wholly changed, and I believed that your feelings had changed also.”
Something in Adelaide’s honest eyes flamed up as he spoke. She could not even look a lie, though she tried hard to do so.
“I am right,” he cried triumphantly, “you have changed! You love me? Adelaide, you love me!”
His arms were almost about her, but she kept him off.
“It is impossible, Professor Waite. It can never be,” she replied solemnly.
“Never is a long day. I will not urge you, or hasten you. I will be patient and wait, for you have changed, and you will love me wholly by and by. It is our destiny. God meant us for each other. I cannot