"Sylvia," I exclaimed, springing up and stepping nearer to her, "it must be discussed! Ever since I parted from you at the window of your writing-room I have been yearning to speak to you. I do not understand the actions of your family and friends, but I do know that those actions were on your account and on mine. They knew I loved you. I have not in the least concealed the fact that I loved you, and I hoped, Sylvia, that you knew it."
She stood, her closed portfolio in one hand, her pen in the other, her eyes downcast, and her face grave and quiet. "I cannot say," she answered presently, "that I knew it, although sometimes I thought it was so, but other times I thought it was not so. I was almost sure of it when you took leave of me at the window, and tried to kiss my hand, and were just about to say something which I knew I ought not to stay and hear. It was when thinking about that morning, in fact,—and I thought about it a great deal,—that I became convinced I must act very promptly and earnestly in regard to my future life, and be true to the work I had undertaken to do; and for this reason it was that I solemnly vowed to devote the rest of my life to the House of Martha, to observe all its rules and do its work."
"Sylvia," I gasped, "you cannot keep this vow. When you made it you did not know I loved you. It cannot hold. It must be set aside."
She looked at me for a moment, and then her eyes again fell. "Do not speak in that way," she said; "it is not right. Of course I was not sure that you loved me, but I suspected it, and this was the very reason why I took my vow."
"It is plain, then," I exclaimed bitterly, "that you did not love me; otherwise you would never have done that!"
"Don't you think," said she, "that considering the sisterhood to which I belong, we have already talked too much about that?"
If she had exhibited the least emotion, I think I should have burst out into supplications that she would take the advice of her Mother Superior; that she would listen to her friends; that she would do anything, in fact, which would cause her to reconsider this step, which condemned me to misery and her to a life for which she was totally unfitted,—a career in her case of such sad misuse of every attribute of mind and body that it wrung my heart to think of it. But she stood so quiet, so determined, and with an air of such gentle firmness that words seemed useless. In truth, they would not come to me. She opened her portfolio.
"I will give you these sheets that I have written," she said; "by right they belong to you. I am sorry the story was interrupted, for I very much want to hear the end of it, and now I never shall."
I caught at a straw. "Sylvia," I cried, "let us sit down and finish the story! We can surely do that. Come, it is all ready in my mind. I will dictate rapidly."
She shook her head. "Hardly," she answered, "after what has been said. Here are your pages."