The door opened and Lucille stood before him with an expression in her eyes which utterly disconcerted him and forced him to cast his down.
"Pardon me my friend," she said in an agitated voice, "if once more I intrude on your solitude, though you so evidently avoid me. You even intend to leave us without a word of farewell. My brother-in-law did not admit this; but I was aware of it from his manner when he left your room, and as I have long suspected this to be your intention, I was not much astonished, though greatly grieved. I owe you so much that it would be useless again to repeat my thanks before we part; but it is not generous in you to deprive me of all opportunity of rendering you any service, or of showing you the deep interest I feel in you. I am persuaded that my friendship is not incapable of giving you relief if you would but return the confidence with which I have always treated you from the first hour we met. A secret grief consumes you. What would I not give to be able to aid you in bearing the load which oppresses you! Now could I leave you, perhaps never to meet you again, and have to reproach myself with the thought, that although knowing, that you, dearest and most devoted of friends, were suffering deeply, I yet allowed a miserable fear of appearing curious and importunate to deter me from making any attempt to assuage those sufferings or to learn their cause!"
"No," she continued with heightened colour, "I know that you are not selfish enough to burden me with this unbearable grief and remorse, only because it humbles your pride to acknowledge your sufferings to a woman."
He did not once interrupt her, but stood with his eyes fixed on the ground. When she had ceased speaking, he made an effort to answer her but he did not look up. "Thank you," he said, "I know that your questions proceed from the kindness and benevolence of your heart; and be assured that if the weight which oppresses me could be lightened by human means, I would apply to you for help--I was enabled to come to your aid, why therefore should I not accept succour from you? But there are certain circumstances in life which cannot be altered, and in such cases, I think it is foolish weakness, and even culpable to give vent to useless complaints, and to importune one's friends with them. Let us part. When the health of your child is completely restored to its former bloom, the sad impressions connected with the remembrance of the Dead Lake will vanish from your mind, and with them the image of a man who"----
Feeling that emotion was overpowering him, he suddenly stopped, and walked to the window to regain his composure. When after a moment he again turned towards Lucille, he saw her leaning against the door post, pale as death and with the same pained expression on her countenance that he had noticed the first day of her arrival.
"Good heavens, what ails you?" exclaimed he; "Know then, if you cannot bear the feeling of being indebted to me, that we are quits. If I have succeeded in saving the life of your child, you have fully acquitted this debt by preserving my own life."
She looked up with surprise.
"Yes," he continued; "on that very table, on the night I first met you, I wrote a farewell letter to life. The letter still lies there, so you see that I have changed my resolution. I do not say that I feel grateful to you for it. Possibly non-existence has its dark side too, but it cannot be worse than remaining between life and death neither suited to the one, nor prepared for the other--enough of this! Is it your fault if the life which you saved was not worth the trouble? Do not let us prolong so painful a meeting. Our paths now diverge--You return to your home, I----go where fate leads me. I am driven on by my destiny like a stone which a boy rolls before him. I thank you for the happy days I have spent in this wilderness; they have been the first, for a long time, in which I felt that I lived. It is a pity that they must pass away like every thing else in this perishable world."
"And why must they pass, away?" she asked looking up with anxious and imploring eyes. "Why will you not accompany us?"
"Why? because"--he suddenly stopped. His eyes whilst wandering round the room had fastened on the letter to his friend which lay on the table, beside the travelling bag. A sudden thought flashed through his mind. "You wish to test the value I set on your friendship, and that it is not pride which prevents me from availing myself of your kindness; well then take this letter, but promise not to read it before to-morrow. Will you promise this?"