I started. "Berna!"
"No! I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man left in the world," she cried vehemently.
"Why?" I tried to be calm.
"Why! why, you don't love me; you don't care for me."
"Yes, I do, Berna. I do indeed, girl. Care for you! Well, I care so much that—I beg you to marry me."
"Yes, yes, but you don't love me right, not in your great, grand way. Not in the way you told me of. Oh, I know; it's part pity, part friendship. It would be different if I cared in the same way, if—if I didn't care so very much more."
"You do, Berna; you love me like that?"
"How do I know? How can I tell? How can any of us tell?"
"No, dear," I said, "love has no limits, no bounds, it is always holding something in reserve. There are yet heights beyond the heights, that mock our climbing, never perfection; no great love but might have been eclipsed by a greater. There's a master key to every heart, and we poor fools delude ourselves with the idea we are opening all the doors. We are on sufferance, we are only understudies in the love drama, but fortunately the star seldom appears on the scene. However, this I know——"
I rose to my feet.