"I can bear this. To have you love me—love me and go away! It will break my heart. To stay here alone!"
The words struck his brain as if they were cast in a fierce glare of light. The suddenness of the knowledge they gave, the revelation they made, left him speechless. Louise loved him in return. The first effect upon his mind was to produce a blank incredulity; he stared at her as if to ascertain whether or not this was in truth she; for though he well knew he possessed her friendship, he had never conceived so fantastic a possibility as that of winning her love. Then a swift exaltation succeeded. He swam in a kind of spiritual ether.
"Louise, Louise, my dear beloved!" he murmured.
He caught her hand, pressed it. She glanced at him without replying, looked away, back again. Her bosom rose and fell with a slow and tremulous movement, as though stirring with deep, soundless sighs. A little smile hovered on her lips, tender, rapturous.
But at length she withdrew her hand, while the soft gladness passed from her face.
"It cannot be; you must go, Lee," she said.
Bryant remembered—and felt the ice forming about his heart. He shivered slightly. The full cruelty of the situation was reached. Ruth Gardner not only held him, but he held her as well by a thread to which she could cling for safety against the blandishments of scoundrels, and her own desires, and the dark uncertainty of the future. And much as he loved Louise Graham, he could not snap that thread; much as he detested Ruth, he lacked the flintiness of heart to let her slip into the abyss. Nor would Louise have it otherwise.
She was seeking his eyes, questioning them.
"Well, this hour is worth it all to me," he said, calmly. "All of the unhappiness of the past, and all the loneliness of the future! I am poor now; in that fact lies what hope I have."
A gentle inclination of her head answered him.