She shook her head slowly, and in a low, mechanical voice, almost as though speaking to herself, said, “I cannot see why you should be so ready to sacrifice everything for my sake. It is far best if we part now, never to meet again. It will be best for both of us, Mr Kennedy, I assure you. Remember, once and for all, that our friendship is forbidden.”
Chapter Twenty Eight.
The Stranger in Black.
“Forbidden!” I cried, taking her proffered hand and keeping possession of it. “Why is our friendship forbidden? I thought you had accepted my friendship! I do not know the truth about yourself—nor do I wish to know. I only know that I desire to serve you in every way a man is capable. I only ask you to allow me to love you, to let me think of you as my own.”
“Ah, no!” she said, withdrawing her hand. “It is not just that I should allow you to thus go headlong into ruin. My duty is to warn you of the dire consequences of this reckless devotion to myself,” she added with that sweet touch of her woman’s nature that had all along held me charmed. “Hear me, Mr Kennedy, I beseech of you. Pause and reflect upon the consequences. You say you are my friend. That may be so, but when I tell you in reply that no friendship is permissible between us, will it not be best if we part at once—
(About five lines missing here.)
of my return to London—not by mere chance surely, but because I am destined to serve you.”
A man’s arguments in such circumstances are never very logical. What other words I uttered I do not recollect. I only know that her determination to tell me nothing about herself rendered her the more attractive.