"Do you know it seems to me as though I had known you for ages, instead of for only a single day. Is it not strange?"
Now Ben did not think this so very strange. He had no cogitation with himself about the fellowship of misery, but he did know that during the entire afternoon when she came up from the strand after her load of trees and he had freighted her with them, they had looked into one another's eyes in a confidential manner that had deeply impressed him. And sometimes when his cuttings had not accumulated fast enough to furnish a load, she had stood by his side and in a soft, caressing way had patted his back and shoulders encouragingly, and when he looked up there was a smile on her lips and a great wide eyed look of confidence and gratitude beaming down upon him. When their eyes met they spoke—not in a language of vowel sounds and consonants, (which same vowels and consonants when they have an opportunity of materializing rush and tumble over one another, and cram themselves in where there is no earthly use for them) they spoke not by breath shaped into philological mysteries, but in the old, old tongue, that has been spoken since Adam first held converse with Eve, and several years before that event, perhaps.
"Does it seem strange to you, Bertha? It don't to me. I feel as if I had known you always—and that I will know you forever!"
Bertha was silent.
"Do you hear me, Bertha—forever!"
"Bertha, I love you! I love you dearly and truly. I love you—!"
Before he could finish Bertha had withdrawn from his arms, and now sat a little apart, trying to look kindly into his face through the darkness, and holding both of his hands in hers.
"Ben, dear Ben, don't love me that way," she simply said. "Love me as a sister. Love me as a very, very dear friend, but do not think of a nearer or closer relationship, Ben. I know I owe my life to you, and I would gladly do any thing for you that lay in my power; love you,—I do, I do! So dearly that I would die for you. But Ben—I can not marry you. I am to be the wife of another. It is settled!"
There was a sorrowful cadence in the last three words that made Ben forget his own misery in compassion for his gentle companion.
"Settled, Bertha! Do you love him?" he asked, not just at that moment reflecting that it was none of his business, and that the question was an impertinence and an insult.