"Antonia, I can lock up my heart no longer! 'Tis a year since I came from America to find a desolate home. For a year I have known myself a widower. Dare I break the spell of silence? Shall I lose all in asking for all? Will you banish me in anger, as you did when it was so black a sin to speak of my love?"
He flung himself on his knees beside her chair.
"Say you will be pitiful and kind, you who are all pity; and if you cannot give me what I ask, promise not to make me an outcast from your friendship."
"I shall never again cease to be your friend, sir!" she answered gently. "I think we know each other too well to quarrel. We are neither of us perfect creatures; but I believe you are a good Christian, and that your friendship will ever be precious to me."
"Make the bond something nearer than friendship, Antonia. Let it be the hallowed tie that makes two souls seem as one. Ah, my angelic friend, seldom has woman been so worshipped as you are by me. The love that stole upon my mind and heart unawares, in this room, when it was so foul a sin to love you; the love purified by years of repentance; the love that haunted me in the wilderness, through long days and nights of toil and pain, when your following ghost was nearer and more real to me than the foe that hemmed us round or the storm that beat upon our heads—that love is with me still, Antonia; time cannot change nor familiarity lessen it. Will you be for ever cold, for ever deaf to my prayer?"
She had heard him to the end. Was it for the joy of hearing him, though she knew what her answer must be? She knew now that she loved him, and had always loved him, from those days of a so-called friendship. She knew that he took all the zest out of her life when he left her; and that the want of his company had been a dull pain, underlying all varieties of pleasure, a sense of loss coming on her on a sudden amidst the tempestuous gaiety of a masquerade, haunting her in some melody at the opera house, saddening her in the midst of a gay throng, where arrows of wit flashed fast to an accompaniment of joyous laughter.
"Can you forget what I told you years ago?" she said. "A marriage is impossible for me. I am married to the dead. I gave myself to my husband for ever. I swore in his dying moments to belong to none but him."
"'Twere madness to keep so wild a vow."
"What! Do the Methodist Christians think it no sin to break their oath?"
"They would violate no vow made in their rational moments. But your promise was given in the delirium of grief, and he to whom you gave it could not be such a self-lover as to fetter youth and beauty to his coffin."