It was not that he did not comprehend the essential innocence of the girl’s offer, or the nobility of her courage, but that, deeper than his intellectual comprehension, he knew that in him a moral fire existed which he had not suspected until the love which had impelled him with longing to the charming figure of the girl had illuminated its depths. Despite all his reasons, despite a mental defiance of conventions, he knew that what called to him from a hidden consciousness was unselfishness, and by that token he knew, too, how much his whole being, his day, and his hope of the future loved and clung to her.
What had she felt these miserable days? He knew that she, too, had suffered. He had seen it in the stricken tensity of her silent, deep eyes, when they had passed in the hall, or when they had met in Tootles’ studio, where she went often now, to be near him silently, no doubt. And between them what a ridiculous barrier intervened—a distorted conception of liberty, born in the intimate tragedy of the past, fed by the ill-considered doctrines of the day—Yet at times he wondered if that were all, if there were not, below her avowed reasons, causes he could not divine. What did he know about her? The longer he had known her, the deeper into the mists her figure had receded. A few hints she had dropped—of her home, of her father; a few scraps of gossip about the young sculptor who had been here before him; a few indications; Costello’s recognition in the dance-hall; the haunting feeling, which had come to him in his days of distress, that there was something in all his exactions and struggles which was not new to her; the strange feeling that had possessed him at times that some one else was present at their side; her own calm insistence that what had passed before did not touch them now—all these confusing memories closed behind her, forbidding the return toward the past as though with impenetrable velvet folds of oblivion. Yet the strangeness of it all fascinated him—the audacity that had borne her where she was, the untamed pride which lingered in the slow-breaking, confident smile that suffused the room and his being with happiness; the echoes of hidden waters which sounded in her low, modulated voice, that had power to dispel hot fevers and bring him the cool of tranquillity, as though gentle fingers had passed across his forehead; the steady depths of the sea-blue eyes, which had looked gravely out upon the storm and the sunshine of life—all this had him in its cruel-sweet spell. His ears heard nothing but remembered echoes, and his eyes were clouded with the obsession of one figure, slender and supple, with the grace of an untamed animal, whose motions were like the rhythm of sweet sounds. He suffered so keenly the torture of these eluding charms that he sprang up with a groan, crying her name, and, all at once, he saw her there in the room, like a shadow, gazing down at him.
He did not dare to speak. He stood silently, his glance fastened on hers, across the little lapse of golden carpet which lay between them like stretches and stretches of space. He did not dare to speak; he was afraid of what her first words would bring, and this nameless terror was so overwhelming that at last he fell back in his chair and covered his face with his hands.
Then he was faintly aware that she was speaking, that her body was swaying toward him, like a perfume spreading through the room.
“Mr. Dan, I can’t—I can’t bear it!”
The next moment he had sprung up; she was in his arms, her head pressed against his shoulder, trembling like a child, crying:
“Oh, no, I can’t bear it; I can’t bear to see you suffer.”
“Yes; that is true,” he said solemnly—waiting.
“I was there last night behind the door,” she said, in a whisper. “Oh, why didn’t you call me?”