"I hope you will be quite rested by morning," he continued, with the same ceremonious gentleness. "I may as well explain to you that, foreseeing how frequently I shall be obliged to sit up late at my studies, I have had the chamber opposite prepared for myself. So I will bid you good-night now."
He held out his hand. She placed hers within it, silently, eyes still averted.
"Good-night, and pleasant dreams!" he repeated, with a kindly pressure of the chill fingers.
An impulse she could not control or define drew her to her feet. "Won't you kiss me, Roy?" she asked, in sorrowful humility.
She did not see how bloodless were the lips that obeyed. The salute was, to her apprehension, cold and reluctant, and, without another syllable, he passed on to the outer door. There he stopped—hesitated, with a backward glance at the drooping figure, standing where he had left her—and returned.
"I had not intended to say it yet," he said, agitatedly. "There have been times when I questioned the propriety of any attempt at self-justification. But I would not have you think worse of me than I deserve for my selfish recklessness in hurrying on our marriage. I received this letter"—giving it to her—"last night. It furnishes the clue to much that I now see ought to have checked my unseemly impatience to claim the right I believed was still mine. This was the communication to which you referred when you pleaded that the contents of your last letter should have hindered my proposal. I supposed, in the haste and excitement of the moment, that you meant the false rumor of your mother's insanity which had been treated of in a former communication, the receipt of which, let me say here, hastened my return. Not that I dreaded insanity for you, but because I gathered from your letter that you were unhappy and a prey to morbid fancies, and I hoped to be able to do you good by diverting these. If this 'last letter' which you hold had reached me in season, your request should have been granted."
He paused to master his own emotion, or to give her opportunity for reply. He may have hoped yet, in the face of the evidence to the contrary he had had, that she would retract her declaration. "I love you no longer" might represent that she was possessed by "morbid fancies" when it was penned; that under the sharp tutelage of sorrow, her affections had regained their balance.
She only sat still, her face hidden in her hands. There was a crouch in her attitude that suggested an unpleasant idea to the observer. It was that she feared him—his wrath and the results of this explanation. He forgot his sufferings in the desire to remove this apprehension if it existed.
"My only hope now is, that since I know what I should have perceived from the beginning, I may spare you annoyance, if not misery, by consulting your wishes and respecting your repugnances. If I could set you free, I would. My heaviest burden is the consciousness that this is impracticable. But it is my desire that, from this time, you should cease to regard me as your husband, and try to think of me as your friend. For we may still be that to each other—may we not, dear Jessie?"
She was moaning as in mortal pain.