She did not answer, and with a rush there came before me the barrier of poverty existing between us. I glanced from my ragged, faded clothing to her immaculate attire, and my heart failed.
“I must be content with hope,” I said at last; “yet I am rich compared with thousands of others; infinitely rich in comparison with what I dreamed myself an hour ago.” I held out my hand. “There will come a day when I shall answer your invitation to the North.”
“You are on your way home?”
“Yes; to take a fresh hold upon life, trusting that sometime in the early future I may feel worthy to come to you.”
“Worthy?” she echoed the word, a touch of scorn in her voice, her eyes dark with feeling. “Worthy? Captain Wayne, I sometimes think you the most unselfish man I ever knew. Must the sacrifices, then, always be made by you? Can you not conceive it possible that I also might like to yield up something? Is it possible you deem me a woman to whom money is a god?”
“No,” I said, my heart bounding to the scarce hidden meaning of her impetuous words, “nor have the sacrifices always been mine: you were once my prisoner.”
She bent down, her very soul in her eyes, and rested one white hand upon my shoulder. For an instant we read each other's heart in silence, then shyly she said, “I am still your prisoner.”
THE END