There was an accent almost of passion in her voice; she felt that so greatly did she desire his deliverance, his justification, his return to all which was his own—desired even his presence among them in her own world—that she could no longer give him calm and unbiased judgment. He heard, and the burning tide of a new joy rushed on him, checked almost ere it was known, by the dread lest for her sake she should ever give him so much pity that such pity became love.
He started to his feet and looked down imploringly into her eyes—a look under which her own never quailed or drooped, but which they answered with that same regard which she had given him when she had declared her faith in his innocence.
“If I thought it possible you could ever care——”
She moved slightly from him; her face was very white still, and her voice, though serenely sustained, shook as it answered him.
“If I could—believe me, I am not a woman who would bid you forsake your honor to spare yourself or me. Let us speak no more of this. What can it avail, except to make you suffer greater things? Follow the counsels of your own conscience. You have been true to them hitherto; it is not for me, or through me, that you shall ever be turned aside from them.”
A bitter sigh broke from him as he heard.
“They are noble words. And yet it is so easy to utter, so hard to follow them. If you had one thought of tenderness for me, you could not speak them.”
A flush passed over her face.
“Do not think me without feeling—without sympathy—pity—”
“These are not love.”