And then he was pressing on again, white in the face now and wrestling fiercely with himself that he might, as it were, pass his own heart which stood in the way; but Dorothy rose up, with a sob, and pressed before him, touching his arm with her slender one in her lace sleeve, and shaking out like any flower the rose and lavender scent in her garments.
“I want to speak to you,” she said, and strove in vain to command her voice.
Eugene bowed and tried to smile, and waited, and looked above her head, through the tree branches into the field.
“I want to know if—you are angry with me because—I would not—marry Burr,” said Dorothy, catching her breath between her words.
“I told you that you had no reason—that he was not guilty,” Eugene said, with a kind of stern doggedness; and still he did not look at her.
“I could not marry—him,” Dorothy panted, softly.
“I told you you had no reason,” Eugene said again, as if he were saying a lesson that he had taught himself.
“Are you angry—with me because I could not marry him?” Dorothy asked, with her soft persistency in her own line of thought, and not his.
Then Eugene in desperation looked down at her, and saw her face worn into sweet wistfulness by her illness, her dilated eyes and lips parted and quivering into sobs, like a baby's.
“I am not angry, but I encourage no woman to be false to her betrothal vows,” he said, and strove to make his voice hard; but Dorothy bent her head, and the sobs came, and he took her in his arms.