"And I for you! and I for you!" he said passionately. "Don't make it too hard for me, Sophy!"
"If you go away from me," I gasped, "I think I shall die. Nicholas—I can't bear it! It was easier for me when I thought you loved somebody else. But now that I know you love me" and I paused.
He took a step forward, but stopped. His arms fell to his sides.
"Not as a beggar!" he said. "Not as a beggar! Never that, for Nicholas Jelnik! I love you too much for that, Sophy. I love you not only for yourself, but for my own best self, too, my dearest."
For a moment he stood there, regarding me fixedly. It was a long look, of suffering, of love, of pride, of unyielding resolve. Then he lifted my hand to his lips, bowed, and left me.
I sat staring over the garden. I wondered if, somewhere on the other side of things, Great-Aunt Sophronisba wasn't snickering.
CHAPTER XX
HARBOR
"My faith, but I'm glad you're entirely well again, Sophy!" wrote The Author, in his small, fine, hypercritical script. "You make the world a pleasanter place by being alive in it. People like you should inculcate in themselves the fixed and unalterable habit of being alive. They should firmly refuse to be anything else. I call this to your attention, in the hope that you will see your bounden duty and do it.