"Oh, Mr. Seaton!"
"I can't tell you what you are to me," continued Paul; "but you know as well as I do that I've cared for nothing in the world but you ever since that evening at Esdaile. You have seen how I have hungered for a kind word from you, and how I have starved when it pleased your whim to withhold it from me. You have seen all this and it has amused you. But I think it has done something more than amuse you, or else I shouldn't be speaking like this to you to-day. Am I right, Isabel?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"I didn't mean to speak yet, but I simply cannot go on like this any longer. The thought of you comes between me and everything else, till I cannot carry on my work or do my duty for thinking of you. Sometimes I think you really care a bit, and then I am lifted up to heaven; and sometimes I think you have merely been playing with me all the time, and then I am plunged in the depths of despair. I must know one way or the other. This suspense is killing me."
"Poor boy!" said Isabel gently.
"No; I don't want your pity or your friendship. I want your love or nothing at all. If I cannot have that, I must do my best to put you out of my life altogether. I will not go on like this."
"Still our friendship is very nice," said Isabel weakly.
"It isn't enough for me. It unsettles me and takes away my peace of mind, without giving me happiness in return. I feel that I could do anything with you to help me; I feel I could do something without you altogether; but I know I can do nothing as long as I am tortured by seeing daily my heart's desire, and not knowing if it can ever be mine or not."
"I wonder my friendship doesn't please you more," said Isabel with some pique. "Other men have found it both satisfying and stimulating."
Paul smiled scornfully. "Not the men who have loved you as I love you," he said.