“I wanted to see you this morning, Basil. I came to your door, and then I was afraid to knock. So I went away again. And then this afternoon, when I couldn’t make you hear, I thought you’d gone away, and I couldn’t have borne another night of it.”
“Tell me quickly what it is, Jenny.”
A horrible fear seized him, and his cheeks grew pale as hers. She watched him with anxious eyes.
“I’ve not been feeling very well these last few days,” she whispered, “and yesterday I went to the doctor. He told me I was going to have a child.”
And then, hiding her face, she sobbed bitterly, Basil’s heart sank within him, and when he looked at that wretched girl, bowed down with fear and shame, he was filled with remorse. If he had never regretted before, he regretted now, with all his soul.
“Don’t cry, Jenny; I can’t bear it.”
She looked up hopelessly, and the ugliness of that fair face, pain-distraught, tortured him. He was all confused, and many an impulse madly skeltered through his brain: he, too, feared, but at the same time, above all and overmastering, was a wonderful elation because he would be the father of a living child. His pulse throbbed with pride, and like a miracle a sudden love mysteriously burnt op his heart; he took Jenny in his arms and kissed her more passionately than he had ever done before.
“Oh, don’t, for God’s sake; it’s nothing to you,” she cried, trying to tear herself away. “But what about me? I wish I was dead. I’d always been straight till I knew you.”
He could bear her agony no longer, and the thought which had come to him immediately now grew irresistible. There was one way to dry those tears, one way alone to repair that wrong, and a rising flood of passion made it very easy. His whole soul demanded one definite course, uplifting him and crushing every nascent objection; but his heart beat painfully when he spoke, for he was taking an irretrievable step, and God only knew what would be the end.
“Don’t cry, darling; it’s not so bad as all that,” he said. “We’d better get married at once.”