March knelt down by her, and raised her head with tender authority she could not resist. He wiped the tears from her face with his own handkerchief; smiled down into the wet eyes. Loving intimacy with his mother and sister had taught him wondrously winsome ways.
“Listen to me, dear!” as he would address a grieving child. “Sometime, when you are quite willing to talk freely to me of this awful ‘all,’ I will prove to you how chimerical it is. Until then, nothing you can say or do can shake my purpose of making you my wife, in God’s own good time. We were made for one another, Hetty! I have known that this great while. I am positive I could convince you of it, if you would give me a chance.”
She arose nervously, her hands chafing one another in an action that was like wringing them in impatience or anguish.
“I must go, Mr. Gilchrist! It is wrong to allow you to say all this. Then, too, Hester will be uneasy and need me.”
“Let me go with you and explain why you have outstayed your time,” March suggested, demurely. “We could not have a more sympathetic confidante than Hester. And I must tell somebody.”
She looked frightened.
“There is nothing to tell! There never can be. Cannot you see? haven’t I convinced you of this?”
“Not in the least. Until you can lay your hand upon your heart—the heart you and I know to be so true to itself and to others—and say, with the lips that cannot frame a lie—‘March Gilchrist, I can never love you in any circumstances!’ I shall not see this other ‘never’ you articulate so fiercely. If you want to get rid of me instantly, and for all time, look at me and say it now—Hetty!”
His lingering enunciation of the name she had never thought beautiful before, would of itself have deprived her of the power to obey. She stood dumb, with drooping head and cheeks burning red as the sunset, her figure half turned away, a lovely study of maiden confusion, had the spectator been cool enough to note artistic effects.
Chivalric compassion restrained all indication of the triumph a lover must feel in such a position.