"Do not bring me down to definitions. I have not at all a logical mind. I mean Ghisleri—that is all I can say. I would much rather talk about you."
"No, I object to that. Tell me, since you wish so much to be Signor Ghisleri, what do you think you would feel if you were?"
"What he feels—everything that a man can feel!" answered Arden, with a sudden change of tone. "To be straight and strong and a match for other men. Half the happiness of life lies there."
His voice shook a little, and Laura felt that the tears were almost in her eyes as she looked earnestly into his.
"You see what I am," he continued, more and more bitterly, "I am a cripple. There is no denying it—why should I even try to hide it a little? Nature, or Heaven, or what you please to call it, has been good enough to make concealment impossible. If I am not quite a hunchback, I am very near it, and I can hardly walk even with a stick. And look at yourself, straight and graceful and beautiful—well, you pity me, at least. Why should I make a fool of myself? It is the first time I ever spoke like this to any one."
"You are quite wrong," answered Laura, in a tone of conviction. "I do not pity you—indeed I do not think you are the least to be pitied. I see it quite differently. It hardly ever strikes me that you are not just the same as other people, and when it does—I do not know—I mean to say that when it does, it makes no painful impression upon me. You see I am quite frank."
While she was speaking the colour rose in two bright spots on Arden's pale cheeks, and his bright eyes softened with a look of wonderful happiness.
"Are you quite in earnest, Miss Carlyon?" he asked, in a low voice.
"Quite, quite in earnest. Please believe me when I say that it would hurt me dreadfully if I thought you doubted it."
"Hurt you? Why?"