time literally in a fever: I couldn't bear my bonnet on;
I couldn't bear my gloves. The want to look at him, and see what
his singular silence meant, and the impossibility of doing it in the
darkening light, irritated my nerves, till I thought I should have
screamed. I took his hand, to try if that would help me. It was burning
hot; and it closed instantly on mine--you know how. Silence, after
_that_, was not to be thought of. The one safe way was to begin talking
to him at once.

"'Don't despise me,' I said. 'I am obliged to bring you to this lonely
place; I should lose my character if we were seen together.'

"I waited a little. His hand warned me once more not to let the silence
continue. I determined to _make_ him speak to me this time.

"'You have interested me, and frightened me,' I went on. 'You have
written me a very strange letter. I must know what it means.'

"'It is too late to ask. _You_ have taken the way, and _I_ have taken
the way, from which there is no turning back.' He made that strange
answer in a tone that was quite new to me--a tone that made me even more
uneasy than his silence had made me the moment before. 'Too late,' he
repeated--'too late! There is only one question to ask me now.'

"'What is it?'

"As I said the words, a sudden trembling passed from his hand to mine,
and told me instantly that I had better have held my tongue. Before I
could move, before I could think, he had me in his arms. 'Ask me if I
love you,' he whispered. At the same moment his head sank on my bosom;
and some unutterable torture that was in him burst its way out, as it
does with _us_, in a passion of sobs and tears.

"My first impulse was the impulse of a fool. I was on the point of
making our usual protest and defending myself in our usual way. Luckily
or unluckily, I don't know which, I have lost the fine edge of the
sensitiveness of youth; and I checked the first movement of my hands,
and the first word on my lips. Oh, dear, how old I felt, while he was
sobbing his heart out on my breast! How I thought of the time when he
might have possessed himself of my love! All he had possessed himself of
now was--my waist.

"I wonder whether I pitied him? It doesn't matter if I did. At any rate,
my hand lifted itself somehow, and my fingers twined themselves softly
in his hair. Horrible recollections came back to me of other times, and
made me shudder as I touched him. And yet I did it. What fools women
are!

"'I wo