"Let us talk of your mother," said Rose. "Since I love you, I love her more; but she does not like me equally."
"But she will, my ingenuous darling. I have talked to her twice. She is quite reconciled, but it will take time for her to act a mother's part. You will have patience?"
Rose wrinkled her delicate brows. "I put myself in her place,—ah, how hard for her! Let me fancy you my son. How could I give you up? And yet it would be wrong for her to take you from one who can make you more happy; is it not so?"
Vesper sprang to his feet. "Yes, Rose; it is you and I against the world,—one heart, one soul; it is wonderful, and a great mystery," and clasping his hands behind him, he walked to and fro along the narrow room.
Rose, with a transfigured face, watched him, and hung on every word falling from his lips, as he spoke of his plans for the future, his disappointed hopes and broken aspirations of the past. It did not occur to either of them, so absorbed were they with each other, to glance at the small window overlooking the dooryard, where an eager face came and went at intervals.
Sometimes the face was angry; sometimes sorrowful. Sometimes a clenched fist was raised between it and the glass as if at an imaginary enemy. The unfortunate watcher, in great perplexity of mind, was going through every gesture in the pantomime of distress.
The lovers, unmindful of him, continued their conversation, and the suffering Agapit continued to suffer.
Vesper talked and walked on, occasionally stopping to listen to a remark from Rose, or to bend over her in an adoring, respectful attitude while he bestowed a caress or received a shy and affectionate one from her.
"It is sinful,—I should interrupt," groaned Agapit, "yet it would be cruel. They are in paradise. Ah, dear blessed Virgin,—mother of suffering hearts,—have pity on them, for they are both noble, both good;" and he dashed his hand across his eyes to hide the sight of the beautiful head held as tenderly between the hands of the handsome stranger as if it were indeed a fragile, full-blown rose.
"They take leave," he muttered; "I will look no more,—it is a sacrilege," and he rushed into the house by another door.