The book she held slipped from the trembling fingers and fell to the floor. Norton walked to the window that he might not see the agony in her sensitive face.
She stood very still and the tears began slowly to steal down her cheeks.
"God pity me!" she sobbed, lifting her face and looking pathetically at Norton. "Why did you let them send me to school? Why teach me to think and feel and know this?"
The low, sweet tones of her wonderful voice found the inmost heart of the man. The misery and loneliness of the orphan years of which she had spoken were nothing to the anguish with which her being now shook.
He crossed the room quickly and extended his hand in a movement of instinctive sympathy and tenderness:
"Come, come, child—you're young and life is all before you."
"Yes, a life of shame and humiliation!"
"The world is wide to-day! A hundred careers are open to you. Marriage is impossible—yes——"
"And if I only wish for marriage?" the girl cried with passionate intensity. "If my ideal is simple and old-fashioned—if all I ask of God is the love of one man—a home—a baby——"
A shadow of pain clouded Norton's face and he lifted a hand in tender warning: