"It was through the medium of her letters that I first obtained my knowledge of her mind, her temperament, her disposition, her admirable domestic virtues; for they were written without reserve. They excited my highest admiration; they stimulated my desire to know more of her; but they contain no word of love for me."
His want of boldness almost excited my contempt. My skill was baffled on every side, and, not caring much to conceal my impatience, I said, "You have asked me to advise you as I would my brother. She is cold and selfish: give her up."
"Give her up!" he said with measured and emphatic slowness—"give her up, when I have sought her beneath every clime on which the sun shines—not for months, but for years? Give her up, when her presence gives me all I have ever known of happiness? Give her up!" and he leaned his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes.
I had imagined him gifted with wonderful self-control, but when I looked up from my work all color had faded from his cheeks, the lips seemed ready to yield the little blood left there by the clinch of the white-teeth upon them, while every muscle of the face quivered with spasmodic effort to control emotion. When the eyes were opened and fixed on the ceiling, I saw no trace in them of anger, revenge, or even of wounded pride. They were full of tears, ready to gush in one last flood-tide of feeling over a subdued, chastened, but breaking heart.
It was very evident that my treatment was not adding much comfort to my patient, however salutary it might prove in the end. I knew of his intention to leave the next day: there was little time left me to aid him, and I had come to regard the unknown woman's mysterious nature or strategic warfare as pitted against my superior penetration. That he might be victorious she must be vanquished. She was, then, my antagonist.
The deepening twilight was producing chilliness. I flooded the room with brilliant light, stirred the grate into glowing warmth, and invited him to a seat near the fire.
"You will not leave me, will you? This may be—it will be—my last demand on you as a confidante. How is the bouquet progressing?" he asked.
"See," I said, holding my embroidery up before me: "we must hurry. I have but one more tendril to add."
"Tendrils are clinging things, like hope, are they not?" he said pensively.
But sentimentalizing was not the business of the hour, and I intimated as much to him. "Yes," I replied, "but hope must now give place to effort. I see you are not going to take my 'give-her-up' advice."