Eugene looked at her, and extended his arms as if he would take her to him again; then drew them back. “I do not know what to counsel you,” he said, slowly. Then his eyes fell before the sudden shame and distress in Dorothy's.
“You do not know what do counsel me!” she cried. “Then you do not—care—” Tears rolled over her cheeks, and Eugene gathered her into his arms again, and laid his cheek against her fair head, and soothed her as he would have soothed a child. “There, there,” he whispered, “it is not that, it is not that, sweet. I would die for you, I love you so! It is not that, but you are the promised wife of another man. How can I turn a thief even for you, Dorothy? How can I bid you be false, and forswear yourself? There's honor as well as love, child.”
“But love is honor,” said Dorothy.
“Not for a man,” said Eugene.
Then she clung to him softly and modestly, and sobbed, and he kissed her hair and whispered in one breath that she was all his own, and in another that he knew not what to do, and was near distracted between his love and his sense of honor, until Dorothy said something which set him pleading for his rival whether he would or no, for the sake of stern justice.
“I am afraid of him, I am afraid of Burr,” Dorothy whispered in his ear. “How could I have married him, when I was so afraid, even if you had not come?”
“Afraid?”
“You—know—what—they said—Burr did!”
Eugene held her away from him by her slender arms, and looked at her. “You did not believe that?”
“He would not tell me he was innocent, even when I begged him so.”