e. He flushed, struggled
with himself; then, going close to her, he said in a vehement whisper:

"I will be what you want ... only what you want. And if the time comes
when ... when I find I can't hold out ... I will tell you, and go away."

Still she could not speak. She held out her other hand to him in
silence. The tears were running over down her face.

He took her hand, hesitated a moment; then lifted it to his lips.

"I swear that I will be your true friend," he said.

She put up the hand that he had kissed with the other, over her face.

"Go now...." she managed to whisper.

"But you believe me? You will still call me your friend?"

"Yes ... my dear, dear friend."

He went quickly from the room. He vowed to himself that he would be her
true friend at no matter what cost to his own feelings. But he had never
loved her as he loved her in that hour. And underneath it all there was
hope, hope, hope---- He could wait. Yes, he could wait long years more,
if need be.

XXXVII

Sophy stood by the open window of her old nursery bedroom at
Sweet-Waters. It was only ten o'clock, but she had come up early this
first evening. She wanted to be alone. Now that she had told Charlotte
and the Judge how things were with her, it was a strain to live up to
their pained conception of the situation. She felt it a reproach that in
spite of all, such an irrepressible fount of glee bubbled within her. It
was not happiness certainly, yet too much akin to it not to be out of
keeping with her present outward state. Her heart would sing in spite of
her. It was like a naughty, overexuberant child shouting week-a-day
songs at a funeral. It sang: "I am free! I am free! I am free!" The sky
was spread with clouds. Behind these clouds was a hidden moon. Its rays
filtered through, and this soft, grey moonlight was eerily
lovely--elfin-like.

From this pale fleece of cloud fell a light shower, trilling on the roof
of the east wing beneath her window. And from field and wood and hill
went up another trilling, exquisitely musical and plaintive--the clear,
sweet, myriad flutes of autumn crickets. So that heaven and earth seemed
doubly woven together by this interlacing of lovely sound, the one
descending, the other ascending.

The rain came softly in her face. She held up her face to it, loving the
delicate, cool touch upon her lips and eyelids.

As usual, Sweet-Waters had given her to herself again. She was just
Sophy Taliaferr