"Don't you know that there is nothing in the world I own or could get too valuable for me to give to you, Ann?" he said, in low, tense tones that I had never heard from him before. "Surely you know what you are to me! The greatest privilege I could ask is to give you everything I have or shall have—a life of devotion—a heart, darling, that has always been yours! A world of love!—"
He came closer still, and in another moment he would have had his arms around me, carried away as he was by the force of his own feelings, but I drew back and he was arrested by the look on my face. His own went white with sudden misery.
"Ann! Surely you don't mean to tell me that I am already too late?"
"Too late?"
"That you love some one else!"
His face, pale and drawn, looked strangely unlike my genial, even-tempered Alfred. He was capable of great depth of feeling, then—besides being so strong, so fine! I had always had an infinite respect for him, and admiration, and affection! I had known that the strength of his nature had been tested and found there; and it was like the strength of oak, sturdy, deep-rooted, indomitable.
"I so nearly love you, Alfred," I cried, struggling between the pain I felt at his hurt and the bewilderment of my own confused feelings.
For the face of Richard Chalmers was between us, and his face, too, spoke strength. Strength of steel, cold, inflexible, even cruel, perhaps—yet holding such a potent attraction.
"—But you quite love some one else?" His voice was calm, although his face was even whiter than a moment before.
"I don't know—I only know that I am oh, so sorry for you—and for myself, too!"