“Loved him!” interrupted Odalite, with flushing cheeks and flashing eyes. “Who ever imagined that I could ever love him? I never told you that I loved him, Le.”
“No, by Jove, so you never did! You never told me that you loved him; and you did tell me that you had never let him kiss you!” exclaimed Le, with a new ring of joy in his voice and a new light of joy in his eyes.
“No,” said Odalite. “It was my greatest merit and my worst fault that I did not love him when I consented to marry him. I was wrong, under any inducement, to consent to such a union; but, Le, if I had loved him, I must have been something of a kindred spirit to him! And that, you know, I am not.”
“Odalite!” said the young man, taking her hand between both of his and trying to calm his tumultuous feelings, and to speak quietly, while they slackened their pace and walked very slowly; “Odalite, darling, I had a long interview with your father yesterday, in which we talked over all these matters. He believes that your fancy and imagination were fascinated, captivated by the arts of that man, who shall be nameless, because I cannot bear to utter, nor you to hear, the accursed name. Your father, however, gave me permission to have this final talk with you, on certain conditions, which I promised to keep.”
Odalite looked up, anxiously, into his face.
“My darling,” he said, as he caressed the hand he held, “when I asked you to take this walk with me to-night, it was because I knew that you were free in hand, at least, to receive the proposal that I came to make you; it was not that we should immediately renew the old engagement that bound our hearts and souls together from our childhood up to the time when the stranger came between us, for I did not know then that your heart, as well as your hand, was free. I thought that it would take time to heal the wound that I supposed you had received in the sudden rupture of your marriage; but that, in time, your woman’s pride, your sense of honor and your conscientiousness would enable you to conquer any lingering interest you might feel in that man. So I came here not to plead for an immediate renewal of our precious betrothal, but only to plead as the best grace you might give me that we might correspond, as brother and sister, while I am at sea, doing my duty there and waiting for the time when we may, please Heaven, be united in a dearer, closer love——”
“But, Le!” she broke out, impulsively; “I love you—I love you—I have never ceased to love you, Le!” And then she would have given words to have recalled the hasty, if true, words.
But they were spoken, and every tone of her voice, every glance of her eyes, every play of her features gave such unquestionable evidence of their truth that she never could have repudiated them.
“Then, oh, my dearest one! why were you ever beguiled into consenting to marry that man—into thinking that you could possibly live with that man?”
“Oh, Le, I was never for a moment beguiled! I never for one moment imagined that I could live with him. I knew I could not do so. I knew I should die under the upas tree of his hateful presence! I knew that it was my life I laid down to save others whom I did love!”