At this moment we heard the footsteps of Sister Sarah in the hall, at least two minutes before the usual time.
When they had gone, I stood by my study table, my arms folded and my eyes fixed upon the floor.
"Horace Vanderley," I said to myself, "you are in love;" and to this frank and explicit statement I answered, quite as frankly, "That is certainly true; there can be no mistake about it."
XXI.
LUCILLA AND I.
A Saturday afternoon, evening, and night, the whole of a Sunday and its night, with some hours of a Monday morning, intervened between the moment at which I had acknowledged to myself my feelings toward my secretary and the moment at which I might expect to see her again, and nearly the whole of this time was occupied by me in endeavoring to determine what should be my next step. To stand still in my present position was absolutely impossible: I must go forward or backward. To go backward was a simple thing enough; it was like turning round and jumping down a precipice; it made me shudder. To go forward was like climbing a precipice with beetling crags and perpendicular walls of ice.
The first of these alternatives did not require any consideration whatever. To the second I gave all the earnest consideration of which I was capable, but I saw no way of getting up. The heights were inaccessible.
In very truth, my case was a hard one. I could not make love to a woman through a grating; and if I could, I would not be dishonorable enough to do it, when that woman was locked up in a room, and could not get away in case she did not wish to listen to my protestations. But between the girl I loved and myself there was a grating compared with which the barrier in the doorway of my study was as a spider's web. This was the network of solemn bars which surrounded the sisters of the House of Martha,—the vows they had made never to think of love, to read of it or speak of it.
To drop metaphors, it would be impossible for me to continue to work with her and conceal my love for her; it would be stupidly useless, and moreover cowardly, to declare that love; and it would be sensible, praiseworthy, and in every way advantageous for me to cease my literary labors and go immediately to the Adirondacks or to Mount Desert. But would I go away on Saturday or Sunday when she was coming on Monday? Not I.