He had bent very close to her, and she felt his breath against her hair as his passionate whisper fell upon her ear. Her heart thrilled to it, but she got up stiffly to her feet, bending her body away from him and covering her eyes, for a moment, with her hand.
Noel, who had risen too, stepped backward instantly. He saw her lips compressed convulsively as if in pain, and, for her sake, he thrust down into his heart its great longing, and forced himself to think of her alone. It cut him like a knife to see that she drew away from him.
“Don’t shrink from me, Christine,” he said. “If it distresses you for me to speak I can be silent. I was obliged to tell you, but there it can stop. I have laid the offering of my love and life before you and there it is for you to take or leave. Perhaps I have startled you. If you will only think about it and try to get used to the idea—”
But Christine had found her voice.
“I cannot think of it!” she cried. “I utterly refuse to think of it. Oh, I am more miserable than ever I have been yet! If I am to make you unhappy—if I am to spoil your life—”
“You have beautified and glorified and crowned it with love, Christine. I should have gone to my grave without it, if you had not given it to me. It is a godlike thing to feel what I feel for you. Come what may I shall never be sorry for it. You have nothing to reproach yourself with.”
Christine was very pale. She felt herself trembling as she sank into a chair and clasped her hands about her knee. Noel too sat down, but farther away from her than he had been before.
“I entreat you not to be distressed—” he began, but she interrupted him.
“Oh, I feel—I cannot tell you what I feel,” she said. “Was ever a woman at once so honored and so shamed? How could I give to any man a ruined life like mine, and yet God knows how it is sweet to me to know you have this feeling for me—to know that I may still arouse in such a heart as yours this highest, holiest, purest, best of all the heart can give. Oh, I pray God to let you feel and know the joy it is to me—and yet I’d rather cut off my right hand than listen even to the thought of marrying you.”