"What?"
"David."
She smiled. "David."
Her face became serious. "It was weeks before I could sleep. I tried to forget you. As the years passed I sometimes thought I had; but when I tried to listen to other men talk of love, I knew I hadn't. I never forgot you. I was on trial with you. I was in prison with you. Though I kept away from you, I suffered with you when you were sick in that poor little room. I have searched for work with you. I have struggled with you to regain place in the world. Haven't you ever felt me beside you?"
"I have always thought of you as far away from me. Of you here"—his eyes swept the library—"in this life."
The glance about the room was an abrupt transition. For an hour or more he had been oblivious to all things save herself and himself. Now the library's material richness recalled to him the circumstances his rapture had for the time annihilated—her wealth, her social position, his poverty, his disgrace. Slowly these forced upon him one relentless fact. His face became grave, then pale.
"Why, what's the matter?" she cried.
"After all, we are as inexorably separated as ever," he said. "We can be merely friends."
"Why?"
"I'm poor—without position in life—covered with dishonour."