Her voice choked with remembered passion, but after a little pause she went on:
"All this, I know as well as you, is absurd"—
"It is very beautiful," he said. "Go on!"
"He was tall and straight, I remember, with brown hair. He was a workman of some kind. I know he used to show me his powerful hands and say he had tried to get the grime from them. They were splendid, heroic hands to me. I would have kissed them if I dared. It was all incredible folly, but I thought I was loving beneath my station, for I was a little grandee in the town. It pleased me to think I was stooping—defying the laws of my house. He never tried to see me at home—he was good and clean—I can see that now, for I remember just how his frank, clear eyes looked at me. He didn't talk much, he seemed content to just look at me."
"Well, that went on for weeks. He used to follow me to church, as the boys do in country towns, but I used to go to different places just to see if he would find out and be there to meet me at the door. He never offered to speak to me or take my arm, but he stood to see me go by. Do you know, if I go into a country church today, that scent of wilted flowers and linen and mingled perfumes almost makes me weep?"
"I understand."
Her voice was lower when she resumed.
"Well, then the dreadful, the incredible happened. He did not meet me any more, and just when I was wild with rage and humiliation came the news of his illness—and then I suffered. O God! how I suffered! I couldn't inquire about him—I couldn't see him. I had kept my secret so well that no one dreamed of my loving him so. The girls thought that he followed me and that I despised him, and when they jested about him I had to reply while my heart was being torn out of me. I spent hours in my room writhing, walking up and down, cursing in a girl's way myself and God—I was insane with it all."
She drew a long breath but it did not relieve her. Her voice was as tense as before when she spoke again. The helmsman leaned to listen, for he could hardly hear.
"Then one day he died—O that awful day! I sat in my room with the curtains down. I couldn't endure the sunlight. I pretended to be sick. I was numb with agony and yet I could do nothing. I couldn't even send a rose to lay on his coffin. I couldn't even speak his name. I could only lie there like a prisoner gagged and on the rack—to suffer—suffer!"