Bettina shook her head.
“You will simply waste your time,” she said. “Nothing can change me from my purpose of going at once to America, with no income but my own little inheritance, and taking up my old life there.”
The word inheritance had suggested to both of them the thought of her mother. They saw the consciousness in each other’s eyes.
“How can you take up your old life there,” he said, “when the presence which made its interest, its very atmosphere, is gone? It is enough to kill you—and you will not have money to live elsewhere.”
The keen solicitude in voice and eyes could not be mistaken. It was evident that he cared for what she might suffer—what might ultimately become of her. The thought was rapture to her starved and lonely heart.
“I must bear it,” she said, trying to control her voice as well as her face. “Life will be no harder to me there than elsewhere.”
“You are wrong. In no other spot on earth will the loss of your mother so oppress you. I know what that has been to you, by my consciousness of what that possession was. And remember one thing, which gives me some right to speak to you as I am doing now—I loved your mother and she also loved me.”
At these words and the tones that accompanied them Bettina’s strength gave way. She dropped back in the seat from which she had risen, and, hiding her face in her hands, burst into tears.
She could not see the effect of her weeping on the man, who still stood motionless and erect before her. She did not know that the tears sprang into his eyes also, and that the whispered utterance of her name was on his lips.
He heard it, however, though she did not, and the knowledge that he had lost control of himself made him turn away and walk to the other end of the room.