"Oh, Harry, I want no freedom but the freedom to love and serve you!" cried she with a rush of tears and a hand held out to him. And then with an irresistible, passionate sorrow she fell on her knees beside him and hid her face on his shoulder. He put his arm round her and held her fast for several minutes, himself too moved to speak. He guessed what this sudden outburst of feeling meant: it meant that Bessie saw him so altered, saw through his quiet humor into the deep anxiety of his heart.
"I'll conceal nothing from you, Bessie: I don't think I have felt the worst of my defeat yet," were his words when he spoke at last. She listened, still on her knees: "It is a common thing to say that suspense is worse to bear than certainty, but the certainty that destroys hope and makes the future a blank is very like a millstone hanged round a man's neck to sink him in a slough of despondency. I never really believed it until Dr. Courteney told me that if I wish to save my life it must be at the cost of my ambition; that I can never be an advocate, a teacher, a preacher; that I shall have to go softly all my days, and take care that the winds don't blow on me too roughly; that I must be an exile from English fogs and cold, let me prefer home ever so dearly; that I must read only a little, and write only a little, and avoid all violent emotions, and be in fact the creature I have most despised—a poor valetudinarian, always feeling my own pulse and considering my own feelings."
"You will have to change much more before you will come to that; and I never knew you despise anybody, Harry," Bessie said with gentle deprecation. "You had a tender heart from a boy, and others feel kindly towards you."
"And come what may, my dear little Bessie will keep her faith to me?" said Harry looking down into her sweet eyes.
"Yes, Harry."
After a pause he spoke again: "You have done me good, dear; I shall rest better for having talked to you to-night. It is in the night-time that thought is terrible. For months past, ever since I was ill in the spring, the foreshadow of failure has loomed dark and close upon me like a suffocating weight—what I must do; how I must live without being a tax on my father, if I am to live; what he and my mother would feel; what old friends would say; who could or would help me to some harmless occupation; and whether I should not, for everybody's sake, be better out of the world."
"Oh, Harry, but that was faint-hearted!" said Bessie with a touch of reproach. "You forgot me, then?"
"I have had several strokes of bad luck lately, or perhaps I ought to suspect that not being in good case my work was weak. Manuscript after manuscript has been returned on my hands. Surely this was discouraging. There on the table is a roll of which I had better hopes, and I found it awaiting me here."
"May I take it to Fairfield and read it?" Bessie asked. "It is as big as a book."
"Yes; if it were printed and bound it would be a book. Read it, and let me know how it impresses you."