With flash-light clearness he saw his difficulty, and that only by the elimination of self could he serve her, and also that her manner of receiving his revelation had but intensified his feeling for her. The few short moments seemed hours of struggle with himself ere he raised her to her feet and spoke quietly, in his old way.
He lifted her hand to his lips. "It is past, Miss Cassandra. We will drop these few moments out of your life into a deep well, and it shall be as if they had never been." He thought as he spoke that the well was his own heart, but that he would not say, for henceforth his love and service must be selfless. "We may be good friends still? Just as we were?"
"Yes, suh," she spoke meekly.
"And we can go right on helping each other, as we have done all these weeks? I do not need to leave you?"
"Oh, no, no!" She spoke with a gasp of dismay at the thought. "It—won't hurt so much if I can see you going right on—getting strong—like you have been, and being happy—and—" She paused in her slowly trailing speech and looked about her. They were down in a little glen, and there were no mountain tops in sight for her to look up to as was her custom.
"And what, Cassandra? Finish what you were saying." Still for a while she was silent, and they walked on together. "And now won't you say what you were going to say?" He could not talk himself, and he longed to hear her voice.
"I was thinking of the music you made. It was so glad. I can't talk and say always what I think, like you do, but seems like it won't hurt me so here," she put her hand to her throat, "where it always hurts me when I am sorry at anything, if I can hear you glad in the music—like you were that—night I thought you were the 'Voices.'"
"Cassandra, it shall be glad for you, always."
She looked into his eyes an instant with the clear light of understanding in her own. "But for you? It is for you I want it to be glad."