“Oh! Those?” said Ray. “Yes. They’re gone, and I’m going. I hate to leave you behind. Have you any message for the country?”
“Only my love.” She faced the manuscript down on the table before her, and rocked softly to and fro a moment. “It does make me a little homesick to think of it,” she said, with touching patience.
He felt the forlornness in her accent, and a sense of her isolation possessed him. When Mrs. Denton should marry again, Peace would be alone in the world. He looked at her, and she seemed very little and slight, to make her way single-handed.
“Peace!” he said, and the intensity of his voice startled him. “There is something I wanted to say to you—to ask you,” and he was aware of her listening as intensely as he spoke, though no change of attitude or demeanor betrayed the fact; he had to go on in a lighter strain if he went on at all. “You know, I suppose, what a rich man I am going to be when I get the copyright on my book. It’s almost incredible, but I’m going to be worth five or six thousand dollars; to be as rich as most millionaires. Well—I asked you to let me be your friend once, because I didn’t think a man who was turning out a failure had the right to ask to be more. Or, no! That isn’t it!” he broke off, shocked by the false ring of his words. “I don’t know how to say it. I was in love once—very much in love; the kind of love that I’ve put into my book; and this—this worship that I have for you, for I do worship you!—it isn’t the same, Peace. It’s everything that honors you, and once it was like that; but now I’m not sure. But I couldn’t go away without offering you my worship, for you to accept for all our lives; or reject, if it wasn’t enough. Do you understand?”
“I do understand,” the girl returned, and she nervously pressed the hand which she allowed to gather hers into it.
“I couldn’t leave you,” he went on, “without telling you that there is no one in the world that I honor so much as you. I had it in my heart to say this long ago; but it seems such a strange thing to stop with. If I didn’t think you so wise and so good, I don’t believe I could say it to you. I know that now whatever you decide will be right, and the best for us both. I couldn’t bear to have you suppose I would keep coming to see you without—I would have told you this long ago, but I always expected to tell you more. But I’m twenty-six now, and perhaps I shall never feel in that old way again. I know our lives would be united in the highest things; and you would save me from living for myself alone. What do you say, Peace?”
He waited for her to break the silence which he did not know how to interpret. At last she said “No!” and she drew back from him and took her hand away. “It wouldn’t be right. I shouldn’t be afraid to trust you”——
“Then why”——
“For I know how faithful you are. But I’m afraid—I know—I don’t love you! And without that it would be a sacrilege. That isn’t enough of itself, but everything else would be nothing without it.” As if she felt the wound her words must have dealt to his self-love, she hurried on: “I did love you once. Yes! I did. And when Mr. Brandreth wanted me to read your book that time, I wouldn’t, because I was afraid of myself. But afterwards it—went.”
“Was it my fault?” Ray asked.