“You had better get rid of those sentimental, backward fancies as soon as possible. The East concerns itself very little about us, I can tell you! It can spare us.”
She thrilled with pain at his words. “I should think you would be the last one to say so,—you, who have so much treasure there.”
“Will you please to understand,” he said, turning upon her a face of bitter calmness, “that I claim no treasure anywhere,—not even in heaven!”
She sat perfectly still, conscious that by some fatality of helpless incomprehension every word that she said goaded him, and she feared to speak again.
“Now I have hurt you,” he said in his gentlest voice. “I am always hurting you. I oughtn't to come near you with my rough edges! I'll go away now, if you will tell me that you forgive me!”
She smiled at him without speaking, while her fair throat trembled with a pulse of pain.
“Will you let me take your hand a moment? It is so long since I have touched a woman's hand! God! how lonely I am! Don't look at me in that way; don't pity me, or I shall lose what little manhood I have left!”
“What is it?” she said, leaning towards him. “There is something strange in your face. If you are in trouble, tell me; it will help me to hear it. I am not so very happy myself.”
“Why should I add my load to yours? I seem always to impose myself upon you, first my hopes, and now my—no, it isn't despair; it is only a kind of brutal numbness. You must have the fatal gift of sympathy, or you would never have seen my little hurt.”
Miss Frances was not strong enough to bear the look in his eyes as he turned them upon her, with a dreary smile. She covered her face with one hand, while she whispered,—