“No,” she interrupted sharply. “Surely not that?”
The tears rose in her eyes: slowly they overflowed and rolled down her cheeks. She made no effort to stay them. She sat still with her face averted and wept silently.
“I’m a clumsy fool,” he said; “I hurt you without intending it. And you’re so sweet and kind... Dear, if you will marry me I will do everything a man can do to make you happy.”
Never one word of love! ... Not one word of love had he ever let fall in all their talks together. She dropped her quivering face suddenly between her hands to hide its sorrow from him.
“All that I have to give is yours,” she whispered—“everything... If all my love can help you just a little I will be glad. I’ve loved you—from that first morning when you spoke to me on the beach.”
He put his arms about her and drew her close and held her, still weeping, with her face hidden upon his shoulder—giving all of herself to him, taking the little that he offered, because she was a woman in love who must have denied the crumbs of his affection.
“I couldn’t bear to lose you,” she sobbed... “I couldn’t bear it. I’ve thought I couldn’t marry you even if you wished it, but—I can’t—give you up.”
Without answering her, he kissed her, if not with passion, with a great tenderness and an almost reverential gratitude; and in his heart he resolved that he would make good to her in every way in which it was humanly possible for the one thing which he could not give her—that which was given already, and which no one can give twice—the pure flame of a first passion. The love which he had for her was the steady glow which succeeds the fierce upward flash of the white flame that leaps from the heart and leaves behind only memories.