“If any one could help me, you could,” he said, “but there is no help for me.”
He had never once admitted to himself that this miserable passion could ever make him happy. It had never occurred to his mind that its termination would be anything but a wretched and humiliating one. As Georgie had suggested, he loved, but had not forgiven, and he told himself that his love was degraded infatuation. What was there to tie to in such a feeling? Did he trust the woman to whom he was in secret a slave? No, he trusted her no more to-day than he had done before. But she had a hold upon his heart-strings, nevertheless. The old witchery was exercising its full power upon him. It had been so strong, at last, that he had been maddened into making this coward’s effort to free himself. If Georgie would stretch out her hand, she might save him a fatal weakness, and so, even while he despised himself for his selfish folly, he had resolved to throw himself upon Georgie’s mercy. And here was the end of it! Georgie was wiser than himself, clearer of sight, truer of soul, stronger, with a brave simplicity; and she had proved to him what a shameful folly it was. Georgie would have none of him; and yet how sweet she was, God bless her!
“I shall leave Pen’yllan, in the morning,” he said. “There is nothing to keep me here now, since you do not want me. Say that you forgive me, Georgie, and we will bid each other good-by, for the present.”
“You must not think that I have anything to forgive,” she answered; “but I do not say that you will be wrong in going. I believe it will be best. You do not quite understand yourself yet. Go away, and give yourself time to find out, whether you can conquer your heart, or not. The time will come when you will know.”
“And then?” somewhat bitterly.
“Something will happen, I think,” her simple faith in the kindness of Fortune asserting itself. “I cannot believe that you will always be as unhappy as you are now. One of you will be sure to do or say something that will help the other.”
A sudden color leaped to his face. Her words held a suggestion of which he had never once thought, and which set his pulses beating hard and fast.
“What?” he exclaimed, his new feeling giving him no time to check himself. “You do not think the time will ever come, when she—when she might feel, too——”
“I think,” said the girl, in a grave, almost reverent voice, “I think the time has come now.”
When they returned to the house, Lisbeth, seeing them from the parlor window, made a mental comment.