“You have indeed shown yourself a very true friend. I could not ask for a better one.”
“Then will you not trust me with a share of your sorrows, that I may help you bear them?”
“No, no; you can not. Nobody can do anything in this case but myself.”
“You do not know. You do not know what love can accomplish when it sets itself to work with the ardor belonging to it.”
“Love! O, do not speak to me of that,” she said, suddenly awaking to the drift of his words, and striving to withdraw her hand.
“No, but I must speak of it,” he said with vehemence entirely foreign to his usual half-mocking philosophy. “I must speak of it,” he repeated with deepening tones. “You surely can not be blind to the fact that I love you devotedly—absorbingly. Every day's intercourse must have shown you something of this, which you could not have mistaken. You must have seen this growing upon me continually, until now I have but few thoughts into which your image does not appear, to brighten and enhance them. Tell me now that hopes, dearer—infinitely dearer—than any I have ever before cherished, are to have the crown of fruition.”
“I can not—I can not,” she sighed.
“What can you not? Can't you care for me at least a little?”
“I do; I care for you ever so much. I am not only grateful for all that you have been to me and done for me, but I have a feeling that goes beyond mere gratitude. But to say that I return the love you profess for me—that I even entertain any feeling resembling it—I can not, and certainly not at this time.”
“But you certainly do not love any one else?”