"Helen!" he said. "I shall have to go away if you won't marry me. Think me as much a fool as you like--the fact remains. You saw--you must have seen how disgracefully I did that simple little thing. Why? Because you were there--because your hand touched mine."
"I will never offer to interfere with your work again!" she said coldly.
"Interfere!" he echoed with a bitter little laugh. "You always interfere! I feel the very touch of your hands upon my clothes."
A slow crimson stained her very forehead. "I am sorry, I will never touch them again."
"That will do no good," he replied gloomily. "Can you not see that your influence touches my life at every point? When I go through the wards I hear you have just passed, I almost see the flutter of your dress. I am always reminded, I am always thinking of you. If you will not marry me, I must go away."
"I cannot marry you, and I have told you why. It is not as though I did not know what love meant. I have known it, and--and I do not know it now. But you need not go away. I will go."
"That, you shall not do," he replied, his chin setting itself long and stern. "Besides it would be no good. This place is redolent of you--your goodness, your sweetness. Oh! Helen, Helen! If you will only marry me, love will come--for you like me--I don't believe there is any one you like better--except perhaps Ned Blackborough."
"Ned!" she echoed, glad of evasion, "poor Ned! I have had such a curious feeling lately that he is in some way maimed; and yet not maimed. I don't know how to express it, but he seems to me to be using his soul more and his body less."
"I wish I could get rid of my body," muttered Dr. Ramsay so quaintly that Helen perforce had to smile; whereat, he said aggrievedly, "It isn't all that either, Mrs. Tressilian; love----"
She checked him with a soft sympathising hand. "Do I not know what love is? Dr. Ramsay! I cannot pity you."