“To leave me,—but I can’t be left. Why, ’Steban, I feel as if I were going to die,” and her lip trembled. “I can’t eat, and I can’t sleep, and—”
“Telegraph me if anything happens,—if that man should bother you again, or—”
“’Steban!” and she sprang to her feet. “I can’t be left,—I shall go, too!”
He concealed his extravagant joy, and bent low over a box of cuffs and collars.
Nina dragged herself across the room to him. “’Steban,” she said, weakly, “have I been very trying this last day?”
“Very,” he growled.
“I will be good now,” she murmured, “and ’Steban—”
“Yes,” he said, encouragingly.
She was standing over him now, erect, pale, womanly, her fingers just touching his shoulder. “My copy-books used to tell me that adversity is the trial of principle; and for the one thing that remains to me unchanged through this unhappy affair—for you—I am deeply thankful. To know that, though alone, I am not alone; that since childhood you have watched over me with the jealous eye of affection; and that now I belong to you, is the only comfort I have.” And seizing his hand, the strong, brown hand that had toiled so many years for her, she pressed it against her lips.
He was silent for a short time, then he remarked, in a muffled voice, “Will you really go to Paris with me?”