"No, I didn't."
"He did?"
"Yes."
"Poor fellow! he had good cause to be angry," says St. John; the old bitterness surging back upon him, as he reflects on the cowardly duplicity that had made waste two honest lives.
"But he was not angry," she cries, eagerly: "he was grieved—oh, so grieved! Shall I ever forgive myself when I think of how he looked when I told him?" (her eyes gazing out abstractedly at the "Rape of the Sabines," as her thoughts fly back to that quarried nook on the bleak autumnal hillside, where she had broken a brave man's heart). "But he was not angry. Oh, no! he never thought of himself! he thought only about me! Ah! that was love!"
"He would not marry you, however?" says St. John, exasperated at these laudations, which he imagines levelled as reproaches against himself.
"No," she answered quietly, "you are right; he would not marry me, though I begged him. But that was for my sake, too—not his own; he told me that he could not make me happy, for that I did not love him. He was wrong, though. I did love him—I love him now. If I did not love the one friend I have in all this great empty world, what should I be made of?" she concludes, while the tears come into her eyes.
"You have a great capacity for loving," says St. John, who, though not usually an ungenerous fellow, is maddened by the expressions of affection, the tears and regretful looks bestowed upon his rival. "I envy, though I despair of emulating you."
"Men have but one way of loving," she answers, gently; "women have several. I love him as the one completely unselfish being I ever met. I agree with you, that the way of loving you mean comes but once in a lifetime."
At her words, and the fidelity to himself which they so innocently imply, a fierce bright joy upleaps in his heart—a joy that clamours for utterance in violent fond words, in the wild closeness of forbidden embraces; but honour, that strong gaoler that keeps so many under lock and key, keeps him too.