Alfred's hand started out toward me again at my passionate words, and caught mine this time, dragging them gently down from my face as he compelled my eyes to meet his.
"What do you mean?" he demanded. "Is he unkind to you, too?"
"Oh, no, not unkind," I stammered, half frightened at the sudden turn of our conversation. "Certainly not unkind. He is the soul of generosity—but we don't—get along well—together." I broke down weakly in my speech, for the sense of disloyalty was strong upon me, and I felt that it was almost as grave a crime to recount the faults of a lover as those of a husband.
But Alfred's face was very serious, and if my perfidy made any impress upon him it was lost in the mazes of a greater problem.
"That is what I've been afraid of," he said in almost the same tones he had used when he made a similar remark upon my telling him I cared for Richard. "I thought you would find that your natures are—incompatible."
"Incompatible? Oh, Alfred, if we marry we'll fight!" I sobbed, burying my face in my hands again, and forgetting the lover Alfred in the dear friend whom I could always go to with a trouble. And I would be willing to stake anything in life that, in that moment, he, too, had forgotten that he was my lover.
"Well, that is a very serious question, and one which you will have thoroughly to thresh out before it is too late," he said, his bright brown eyes anxious and troubled. He looked down upon me with infinite sympathy.
"And you are going away so soon—and for so long?"
"Well, if I were not going away I could no longer be a—a friend to you, Ann; for I am not capable of giving you unbiased advice, and that is what you need. It would be a great temptation to make capital for myself out of your troubles with—him; and I can't lower myself this way. So don't grieve over my going away, and—take council with your mother and Mrs. Clayborne. I am not the one to advise you in this case."
So he went out into the blackness!