Margaret fortified him in this hope by holding out her hand to him.
“I thank you, Raymond,” she said, not afraid to call him by his name as she used to do. “I am touched, deeply touched.”
They were not quite the words he had expected from her. He watched her in an anxious ecstasy, entreatingly. As she kept silent, he murmured timidly:
“Why thank me, when I love you? It seems to me that loving you is worth more than—— Margaret, will you really be my wife?” he added, like a sigh.
There were compassion and sorrow in her beautiful pale face as she answered:
“Raymond, I can’t.”
“You can’t? Then—then you are in love with some one else?”
“Ah, my friend!”
“Yes, you are in love with some one else. Some one who has not been a coward like me, who has known how to divine your thoughts, to understand you, to be worthy of you, while I—well, I have lost my happiness by my own fault. It’s just, but it means unhappiness to one who loves you.”
He stopped and gave a heavy sob.