He started to his feet as if a hand had struck him, walked a few steps, and then turned toward me with a blanched face, and eyes that seemed to be leaping from their sockets; he was struggling between anger and policy. The latter prevailed, as he said:
"You are much interested in me; you fear that I shall have a friend. Is that it?"
"I suggested nothing of that kind; I fear my lovely Clara may die." He smiled derisively.
"Am I then such a monster that I am feared? Really, Miss Minot, your picture of me is rather different from anything I have before known."
"I ought to have known you would not understand me. It would have been equal folly for me to try to explain Clara's nature to you, for you do not and cannot appreciate it."
"We are getting into deep water," he interrupted, but I continued:
"I have never called you a monster and have treated you as well as I knew how to. You were my brother's friend, I have not doubted your esteem for Clara, for how can any see her without loving and respecting her; that is not the point. Your feelings, she has told you, she cannot reciprocate; why can you not respect her feelings, even at the sacrifice of your own? If you would do this, Mr. Benton, you would be stronger."
"Miss Minot, you are braver than I imagined. Let me disarm your fear; I have no intention of intruding myself where I am not desired. How you came in possession of these interesting facts is a mystery (insinuating, I felt, that I had been eavesdropping). Nevertheless I admit them all, and I admire you greatly. You are, however, as impulsive as a changeful sea, and you made little preparation for this conversation. Allow me to suggest that in affairs of the heart you should be a little less stormy. I am your friend, and I say this in kindness."
"I thank you, sir; you have lived longer than I have, and I know by the expression in your eye to-day that you can, if you choose, govern all the love in your nature at the will of your intellect; I cannot, and I never want to; I like to be impulsive, I like to be true, I hate policy." As I spoke, my eyes were, I know, like dark fires.
He looked like a man of marble as he said, "Your fears are ungrounded; you might have spared yourself this trouble," and turning, left me.