"And you care?" he whispered.
"I care so much that I care for nothing else!" she said—then, all suddenly she broke down and began to weep pitifully, clinging to him and murmuring the grief she had till now so bravely restrained—"But it is all too late!" she sobbed—"Oh my dearest, you love me,—and I love you,—ah!—you will never know how much!—but it is too late!— I can be of no use to you!—I can never be of use! I shall only be a trouble to you,—a drag and a burden on your days!—oh John!—and a little while ago I might have been your joy instead of your sorrow!"
He held her to him more closely.
"Hush, hush!" he said softly, soothing her as he would have soothed a child,—and with mingled tenderness and reverence, he kissed the sweet trembling lips, the wet eyes, the tear-stained cheeks—"Hush, my little girl! You are all my joy in this world—can you not feel that you are?" And he kissed her again and yet again. "And I am so unworthy of you!—so old and worn and altogether unpleasing to a woman—I am nothing! Yet you love me! How strange that seems!—how wonderful!—for I have done nothing to deserve your love. And had you been spared your health and strength, I should never have spoken—never! I would not have clouded your sunny life with my selfish shadow. No! I should have let you go on your way and have kept silence to the end! For in all your vital brightness and beauty I should never have dared to say I love you, Maryllia!"
At this she checked her sobs, and looked up at him in vague amazement.
"You would never have spoken?"
"Never!"
"You would have let me live on here, quite close to you, seeing you every day, perhaps, without a word of the love in your heart?"
He kissed her, half-smiling.
"I think I should!"