“What a simpleton I used to be,” she suddenly exclaimed; “so young, so deplorably ignorant!”
“Why do you say this?”
“Because I thought that engaged people entered upon a dream of bliss; while you—the more intimately I know you the higher rises some dreadful, dreadful barrier between us. Stanton, tell me, tell me why you are so moody and restless with me lately? Do you not wish to marry me?”
He stooped and kissed her lustrous eyes. “You are mine, mine,” he repeated in accents of repressed passion. “Would to God that you were my wife now.”
“I feel like a restless wave beating against a rock,” she said mournfully. “Am I never to share your troubles?”
The hand resting on her shoulder trembled, and she saw that he was wavering in his hitherto fixed resolve not to confide in her.
“Now—now,” she said eagerly; “tell me tonight. If you love me, trust me.”
“I am racked with anxiety,” he muttered. “What you ask me to do is the right thing, yet you may shrink from me; you may never marry me.”
“Have you ever done anything dishonorable yourself?”
“No; but I have shielded my own flesh and blood; more from instinct than from affection, perhaps, I have done it.”