"I don't know what to say to you, Kenny," she murmured, almost inaudibly.
"There is nothing for you to say, Viola, unless you love me. I am sorry if I have distressed you. I only wanted you to know before I go away that I love you."
"I—I am glad you love me, Kenny. It makes me very happy. But it is all so strange, so unreal. I can't seem to convince myself that it is right for you to love me or for me to love you. Some day, perhaps, it will all straighten itself out in my mind and then I will know whether it is love,—the kind of love you want,—or just a dear, sweet affection that I feel for you."
"I understand," he said gravely. "It is too soon for you to know. A brother turned into a lover, as if by magic, and you are bewildered. I can only pray that the time will come when your heart tells you that you love me as I want you to, and as I love you."
They spoke thus freely before the girl's mother, for those were the days when a man's courting was not done surreptitiously. It is doubtful, however, if they remembered her presence.
"There have been times—" she began, a trace of eagerness in her voice, "when something seemed to tell me that—that I ought to keep away from you. I used to have the queerest sensations running all over—" She did not complete the sentence; instead, as if in a sudden panic over the nearness of unmaidenly revelations, she somewhat breathlessly began all over again: "I guess it must have been a—a warning, or something."
"They say there is such a thing as a magnetic current between human beings," he said. "It was that, Viola. You felt my love laying hold upon you, touching you, caressing you."
"The other night, when you held me so close to you, I—I couldn't think of you as my brother."
Out of the darkness spoke Rachel Carter.
"You love each other," she said. "There is no use trying to explain or account for your feelings. The day you came here, Kenneth Gwynne, I saw the handwriting on the wall. I knew that this would happen. It was as certain as the rising of the sun. It would have been as useless for me to attempt to stop the rising sun as to try to keep you two from falling in love with each other. It was so written long ago."