She sat down, and watched me. The pang across my eyes was sharper still. She arose again: took off her cape and sitting folded her hands in her lap.
“Mildred——”
What was the cause of this pang? Was she a disappointment to my eyes, that what they saw hurt knife-like? Oh, she is perfect fair. And yet I know, even before I have begun to speak, what is this knowledge pressing and cutting my eyes, which all her fairness, all my words unspoken shall not prevail against.
“Mildred—Mildred.”
I felt the need of touching her, as if to prove that she was there. I came to her and I knelt at her side, and I took her hand ... she let me take her hand ... and I pressed its palm against my brow. The pang is sharp, inside: her hand cannot reach it.
I arose. And my words came as earnestly for me, as for herself.
“Mildred, you know that I love you.”
“Yes, John,” was her whisper.
“You are all my life. When I saw you last, this was true and I knew it for true: and I said this to you. But, Mildred, I could not dream then how true it was, how true it was going to be.”
Her eyes at once were darker and more bright, filling with her sympathy. She was thinking of my parents.