He paused a brief second. She, too, was standing, and she was trembling with emotion, but he did not observe it, nor that her lips were quivering. “I came here to-day to ask you to marry me. I was willing to forego the vows I was about to take, for which I have been preparing all my life.”
He took a step nearer, and looked down at her. “Margie, I love you so! I did not know such a thing existed as this fire which has permeated my entire being! It will be my curse in my chosen life, because I will never be able to concentrate my mind on the work before me. Your face will be always between me and my duty. I could almost hate you for shattering all the hopes and aspirations of a lifetime!”
He waited for some sign that she heard him, but she stood like a piece of marble. “Yet perhaps had you loved me, and we had married, I would neither be happy, nor cause you to be. So, though you are dearer to me than all the world, dearer than the cloistered life I thought would be all-sufficing, I thank you for not returning my love.”
Wheeling abruptly, he walked down the path to the gate.
“Oh,” she whispered to herself, wringing her hands together, “he thanks me for not loving him!”
[CHAPTER XIII.]
“Thus repuls’d, our final hope
Is flat despair.”
During the week that Robert was trying to choose his path for life, Mrs. Malloy watched him with anxious, loving eyes, conscious of his struggle, herself elated and depressed according to the moods his face reflected.
On the morning of the day he called on Meg, he had gone to his mother, and nestling at her feet as had been his habit since his early childhood, had leaned his head against her knee. She laid her hand caressingly on his head, as though inviting him to speak.