“I don’t know. Work if I can, and starve if I can’t. It doesn’t matter; nobody will miss me, or care what happens to me.”
“Don’t say that, Joan,” he answered huskily; “I—I care, for one.”
“It is very good of you to say so, but you see you have others to care for besides me. There is Miss Levinger, for instance.”
“I have told you once already that I am not engaged to Miss Levinger.”
“Yes, but a time will come when you will tell me, or others, that you are; and I think that you will be right—she is a sweet girl. And now, sir,” she added, with a total change of manner, “I think that I had better tidy up and bid you good night, and good-bye, for I dare say that I shall come back here no more. I can’t wait to be driven out like a strange dog.” And she began to perform her various sick-room duties with a mechanical precision.
Henry watched her for a while, until at length all was done and she made ready to go. Then the heart which he had striven to repress burst its bonds, and he sat up and said to her, in a voice that was almost a cry,—
“Oh! Joan, I don’t know what has come to me, but I can’t bear to part with you, though it is best that you should go, for I cannot offer to marry you. I wish to Heaven that I could.”
She came and stood beside him.
“I will remember those words as long as I live,” she said, “because I know that they are true. I know also why you could not marry me; for we hear all the gossip, and putting that aside it would be your ruin, though for me it might be heaven.”
“Do you really care about me, then, Joan?” he asked anxiously, “and so much as that? You must forgive me, but I am ignorant in these things. I didn’t quite understand. I feel that I have become a bit foolish, but I didn’t know that you had caught the disease.”