"I love you!" he cried, and his face was buried on my bosom.
From that hour the Rev. Herman Barnhurst was the constant visitor at my house. He lived in my presence. His sermons, formerly lofty and somber in their enthusiasm, became colored with a passionate warmth. I felt a strange interest in the beautiful boy; a feeling compounded of pure love; of passion; of voluptuousness, the most intense and refined.
"O, Marion, do you not think that if I act aright in all other respects, that this one sin will be forgiven me?" said Herman, as one Sabbath evening, after the service was over, we sat, side by side, in my house. It was in a quiet room, the curtains drawn, a light shining in front of a mirror, and a couch dimly seen through the shadows of an alcove.
"One sin? what mean you, Herman?"
"The sin of loving you,"—and he blushed as his earnest gaze met mine.
"And is it a sin to love me?" I answered in a low voice, suffering my hand to rest upon his forehead.
"Yes," he stammered,—"to love you thus unlawfully."
"Why unlawfully?"
He buried his head on my breast, as he replied,—"I love you as a husband, and I am not your husband."