“But you don’t know, Rhoda—you never have seen—” he began earnestly.
“Ah, but I have seen, Jeff,” she broke in sadly. “I’ve seen the poor negroes that my father and I have helped on their way to Canada taking such desperate risks and enduring such awful sufferings in the hope of winning their freedom that I don’t need to see anything else. Divided like that, dear, on a matter that goes so deep with both of us, there could be no real understanding and sympathy between us, no true marriage. I think your convictions and your ideals are wrong—they are hateful to me—but I honor you for being true to them. I honor you more and love you more than I would if you gave them up, while you still believed in them, for love of me.”
“You are right, dear heart,” he said, the pain of baffled and hopeless love sounding in his voice. “I could not be false to my convictions and my principles, even for you, my sweet, any more than you could be false to yours. You make me understand, as I haven’t before, what this means to you.”
“No, Jeff, I can’t see that there’s any hope for us, for our happiness, on this earth, as long as this thing lasts that lies between us. Perhaps, in heaven—”
Their eyes met, and her voice trembled and ceased. They stood with hands clasped, looking through open windows into each other’s souls, gazing deep into the warm and lovely depths of love, which they were putting behind them, and turning their vision upward along the heights where material aims crumbled away and hope and aspiration became only the essence of the soul’s ideals. And as they gazed it seemed to them that somewhere up in that dim region of eternal truth their spirits met and were joined.
A faint sigh fluttered from Rhoda’s lips. With a start Delavan dropped her hands and sank upon the sofa beside them. His head bowed on his breast and a deep, shuddering breath, that was almost a sob, shook his body.
“I think I’ll go now,” said Rhoda tremulously.
“No, don’t go. I want you beside me a little while. Sit down here. No, don’t be afraid—give me your hand.”
For a little space they sat in silence, like two children venturing into some unknown region and gaining courage by clasp of hands. At last he rose.
“I will leave you now, dear heart. But it’s not good-by, even yet. I still believe that sometime I shall call you wife. I’m proud to have won your love, Rhoda, prouder than of anything else I shall ever do.”