“I don’t know,” he said, “but I feel there is something—a part of you and your experiences from which I and others are shut out, and that part is the greatest part of you. I argue that, because, although you attract many, myself, poor moth, among them, no one gets near to you. An invisible but formidable wall surrounds you, from which all our attempted gallantries rebound like arrows which strike rocks. And there you are behind it, always smiling and agreeable, but entirely unmoved and secure. Now, somebody or some experience built that wall, for it is not in the nature of things for it to be there without cause.”
“Go on,” she said, smiling, as he waited for her to speak. “You will end by being a great architect yet. How like magic you put up that wall.”
“You may chaff as much as you please,” he said, a little savagely, “but I am not to be put off that way. Now that I have begun I am going to say some things seriously and you must hear them seriously.”
“I told you to go on,” she said, composedly.
“And so I will,” he grumbled, “though I know perfectly well that it would be manlier if I kept silence. As you say, we have eaten and walked and talked together as freely as children for more than two years. In that time we have become well acquainted—not the poor, shallow acquaintance of formal society, but the near, intimate association of two human beings who honestly express themselves to each other. The result of this comradeship is that I love you. I will not say I have learned to love you, for something of the fact was clear to me the very first time I saw you. In all probability you don’t remember the incidents of that day at all, but I do. Brooks, our good host, as you know, is my old friend. I had drifted to this city in an aimless way, as I had been drifting for years. He met me and brought me home to dinner with him. I have always adored intellect in man or woman. One look into your eyes told me that you are of uncommon endowments. Then, along with a beautiful but simple stateliness of manner, you have certain childish graces of which you are unconscious. You have never put your childhood entirely away from you. I particularly noticed the correct school-girlish arrangement of your knife and fork at the end of the dinner, and was charmed by it. After we left the table I said to Brooks that you had wonderful eyes. He agreed with me, but warned me not to let them undo me, because he said you were constructed on a novel plan, one man being the same as another to you, and all being as nothing.
“I paid no attention to his warning, as you see. On the contrary, when he went to the Times office and secured me a situation, I accepted it gratefully, because I could then become a member of his household and see you every day. I have loved you ever since, and have had much quiet joy in it, and it has bettered me in many ways. I know perfectly well—I have always known—that you do not love me, and in my least selfish moments I am glad of it, because I have nothing to offer you that is fit for you to accept. I would not tell you that I love you—never a word of it—were I not sure that it will not hurt you. In the years to come the memory of it may comfort you. It is a great comfort to me now, hopeless as it is. It helps me only to tell it. O my child, my heart has long been sick and sore from bruises the like of which I pray you may never know. We men are set up to be so strong and pretend to be so self-satisfied, but we are only grown-up children after all. When we are sore in spirit we long for some loving woman soul to take us to her arms and pet and soothe us mother-like, yet we often live our lives without it.
“I am fifteen years older than you, and know the world well—better than I wish I did—so well that I should like to protect you from its ugly phases. Yet I am powerless to do it. Never did I so deeply lament my aimless, wasted life as now, when I see myself with nothing to offer you and yet loving you with all my heart. Sometimes, since I have known you, I have dreamed that with your help I could pull myself together and make something of my life yet; but the dream is only temporary—it flees, the reaction comes and I sink back to the rôle of a nobody which I have long been playing, and doubtless shall play to the end—an end that I may make for myself any day.
“To say that I despise myself for being the wretched failure I am is to express myself but lamely. My love has in it an element of the paternal. I am not thinking so much of what you might be to me, but of what I earnestly wish I might be to you. I long to shield you from the infinite horror of the experience we call life, as it is revealed to many. You are like a tall young pine-tree standing alone on a high rugged and rocky mountain side, enjoying the sunshine and swaying gently in the summer breeze, not knowing that the winter of the future will bring storms that may tear its roots from the earth. You know not your own value, that is the danger. Some day you may give your love and have your heart broken. That’s what happens to strong souls usually, and you are one of them. I know the answer to the woman poet’s question:
“‘Is it so, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer most?
That the strongest wander farthest, and most hopelessly are lost?
That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain,
And the anguish of the singer, makes the sweetness of the strain?
“‘I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now.’
“Yes, I know the answer to that, and it makes me anxious about your future. Behold the pitiful spectacle of a man who loves a woman, tells her of it, and yet confesses himself a hopeless failure.”