He made no explanatory reply, but after a brief silence said, "I must go,
Leila, where there are both duties and dangers—not—no, not in cities."
"I trust you do not mean to leave us—surely not!"
"No, not yet—not while I can be of use to these dear friends."
As she moved on at his side or before him, he saw too well the easy grace of her strong young virgin form, the great blue eyes, the expressive tenderness of features which told of dumb sympathy with what she had no knowledge to understand. He longed to say, "I love you and am condemned by my conscience to ask no return." It would only add to his unhappiness and disturb a relation which even in its incompleteness was dear to him. The human yearning to confess, to win even the sad luxury of pity beset the man. In his constant habit of introspection, he had become unobservant and had no least idea that the two young people he loved so well were nearing what was to him forever impossible.
"Let me sit down," he said unwilling to leave her; "I am tired." He was terribly afraid of himself and shaken by a storm of passion, which left his sensitive body feeble.
She sat down with him on a great trunk wrecked a century ago. "Are you not well?" she asked, observing the paleness of his face.
"No, it is nothing. I am not very well, but it is nothing of moment. Don't let it trouble you—I am much as usual. I want, Leila, what I cannot get—what I ought not to get." Even this approach to fuller confession relieved him.
"What is there, my dear Mr. Rivers, you cannot get? Oh! you are a man to envy with your hold on men, your power to charm, your eloquence. I have heard Dr. McGregor talk of what you were among the wounded and the dying on the firing-line. Don't you know that you are one of God's helpful messengers, an interpreter into terms of human thought and words of what men need to-day, when—"
"No, no," he broke in, lifting a hand of dissenting protest. The flushed young face as she spoke, his sense of being nobly considered by this earnest young woman had again made him feel how just the little more would have set free in ardent words what he was honestly striving to control.
"Thank you, my dear Leila, I could wish I were all you think I am; but were it all true, there would remain things that sweeten life and which must always be forbidden to me."