"Will you not say 'God keep you, Leith,' before I go?"
She could scarcely control the cry that was wrung from her heart. She could not lie with the name of God upon her lips. She was doing evil that good might come, but she could not go so far as that.
She looked up at him with an anguish which he could not comprehend. Her white lips trembled piteously. Her hands were twisted about each other in a manner which he had never seen before, and for a moment he was frightened. And then he found himself listening intently to her mumbled words, almost inaudible, incoherent:
"Ask nothing of me today, Leith. I can not—say—Oh, my God, have pity upon me, and go!"
She flung out her hands passionately, and he caught them in his tenderly, and pressed his lips upon them.
"Remember," he said, softly, "that my love is as steadfast as the grave. There is no demand you can make which it would not yield. Rest, my love, and have a little pity upon yourself. Your sensitiveness, your conscientiousness is too great, if such God-given gifts can come in superabundance. Little one, go pray to the Blessed Mother to help you and to show you the right way in this trouble, from which I am shut out."
He had been holding her hands in a close, warm clasp, and as his voice ceased he lifted them again and kissed them, without passion, but with the tenderness of incalculable love, and then he passed out, leaving her standing there like some crushed autumn rose.
The accepted lover, the betrothed husband, worshiping at the shrine that had apparently blessed him with the greatest favor that he had ever prayed for, went down the stoop with a sigh upon his lips, instead of the smile of exultant joy, and the girl who had promised herself in marriage sank down upon the floor in the place where he had stood, sobbing in that tearless way that echoes through a broken heart.
It was a long time before Jessica could sufficiently control herself to venture to her side, but when she did she put her arms about the shrinking girl and lifted her as gently as a sister might have done.
"What is it?" she questioned, as if she had not been a witness of that scene. "What has happened to upset you like this, dear one? Has—he been here?"