It was the nearest submission to it she
had ever given. She heard him in unbroken silence; she kept silence
long after he had spoken. So far as her courage and her dignity could be
touched with it, she felt something akin to terror at the magnitude of
the choice left to her.
"You give me great pain, great surprise," she murmured. "All I can trust
is that your love is of such sudden birth that it will die as rapidly--"
He interrupted her.
"You mean that, under no circumstances--not even were I to possess
my inheritance--could you give me any hope that I might wake your
tenderness?"
She looked at him full in the eyes with the old, fearless, haughty
instinct of refusal to all such entreaty, which had made her so
indifferent--and many said so pitiless--to all. At his gaze, however her
own changed and softened, grew shadowed, and then wandered from him.
"I do not say that. I cannot tell----"
The words were very low; she was too truthful to conceal from him what
half dawned on herself--the possibility that, more in his presence and
under different circumstances, she might feel her heart go to him with a
warmer and a softer impulse than that of friendship. The heroism of his
life had moved her greatly.
His head dropped down again upon his arms.
"O God! It is possible, at least! I am blind--mad. Make my choice for
me! I know not what to do."
The tears that had gathered in her eyes fell slowly down over her
colorless cheeks; she looked at him with a pity that made her heart ache
with a sorrow only less than his own.
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