“I’m glad of that, and I want you to remember, Horace, when you are making your speech, that you are not to consider me or my sentence at all. Say the thing that will help toward what we all want. Don’t think about me—just think about Mary Ellen and what she was willing to undergo, and all the rest of those poor black creatures that are longing so for their freedom.”
His chair was beside hers now and he was seizing her hand. “Rhoda! Not think about you! How can I help it? Don’t you know I’m always thinking about you and always hoping that some day you’ll think better about what I’ve been hoping for so long? Isn’t there any chance, any prospect of a chance, for me yet?”
She laid her free hand upon his two that were clasping hers. “I’m sorry, Horace! You know how much I like you, how much I prize your friendship—but you are like a dear brother to me, Horace, and I can’t think of you any other way!”
“But isn’t it possible that sometime—don’t you think, Rhoda, that after a while you’ll learn to like me the other way too? You know what I am, you know how much I love you—won’t my heart’s love draw yours, after a while?”
She shook her head and drew her hands away. “No, Horace, there isn’t any hope, not the least in the world. And I wish, dear Horace, I wish you would put it quite out of your mind. Don’t waste any more time thinking about me. There is many a nice girl who would make you a good wife, and I do wish, Horace, for your own sake, you would fall in love with one and marry her.”
He looked at her searchingly. “When a girl talks that way she really means it.”
“You know I mean it, Horace.”
“I mean, Rhoda, that she knows her own heart, clear through, and feels sure about it.”
“That’s the way I know mine,” she answered softly.
He seized her hand again as he exclaimed, “Does that mean, Rhoda, that there is some one else and that your heart is full already?”