He stretched out his groping hand, which swayed back and forth in the empty air, but felt the clasp of no soft fingers clinging to it, and a wistful, troubled look settled upon the face of the blind man, just as a chill of fear was settling upon his heart.
"Edith, darling, where are you?" and his hand sought the ottoman where she had been, but where she was not now.
Noiselessly, as he talked, she had crept away to the lounge in the corner, where she crouched like a frightened deer, her flush creeping with nervous terror, and her eyes fastened upon the man who had repeated her name, asking where she was.
"Here, Richard," she answered at last, her eyelids involuntarily closing when she saw him rising, and knew he was coming toward her.
She had forgotten her promise to Arthur that she would not answer Richard "No," should he ask her to be his wife; that, like Nina's "scratching out," was null and void, and when he knelt beside her, she said half bitterly,
"It must not be; THE SINGING BIRD CANNOT MATE WITH THE OWL!"
Instantly there broke from the blind man's lips a cry of agony so pitiful, so reproachful in its tone, that Edith repented her insulting words, and winding her arms around his neck, entreated his forgiveness for having so cruelly mocked him..
"You called yourself so first," she sobbed, "or I should not have thought of it. Forgive me. Richard, I didn't mean it. I could not thus pain the noblest, truest friend I ever had. Forgive your singing bird. She surely did not mean it," and Edith pressed her burning cheeks against his own.
What was it she did not mean? That it could not be, or that he was an owl? He asked himself this question many times during the moment of silence which intervened; then as he felt her still clinging to him, his love for her rolled back upon him with overwhelming force, and kneeling before her as the slave to his master, he pleaded with her again to say IT COULD BE, the great happiness he had dared to hope for.
"Is there any other man whom my darling expects to marry?" he asked, and Edith was glad he put the question in this form, as without prevarication she could promptly answer,