you think that the
friendship I can give you can be worth what it would ask? I feel withheld
and ashamed as I speak to you. I know how little I can do, how little I
can offer. To fetter you by a word would be base and selfish; but, oh,
Mercy, till life brings you something better than my love, let me love
you, if it is only till to-morrow!"

Mercy listened to each syllable Stephen spoke, as one in a wilderness,
flying for his life from pursuers, would listen to every sound which could
give the faintest indications which way safety might lie. If she had
listened dispassionately to such words, spoken to any other woman, her
native honesty of soul would have repelled them as unfair. But every
instinct of her nature except the one tender instinct of loving was
disarmed and blinded,--disarmed by her affection for Stephen, and blinded
by her profound sympathy for his suffering.

She fixed her eyes on him as intently as if she would read the very
thoughts of his heart.

"Do you understand me, Mercy?" he said.

"I think I do," she replied in a whisper.

"If you do not now, you will as time goes on," he continued. "I have not
a thought I am unwilling for you to know; but there are thoughts which it
would be wrong for me to put into words. I stand where I stand; and no
mortal can help me, except you. You can help me infinitely. Already the
joy of seeing you, hearing you, knowing that you are near, makes all my
life seem changed. It is not very much for you to give me, Mercy, after
all, out of the illimitable riches of your beauty, your brightness, your
spirit, your strength,--just a few words, just a few smiles, just a little
love,--for the few days, or it may be years, that fate sets us by each
other's side? And you, too, need a friend, Mercy. Your duty to another has
brought you where you are singularly alone, for the time being, just as my
duty to another has placed me where I must be singularly alone. Is it not
a strange chance which has thus brought us together?"

"I do not believe any thing is chance," murmured Mercy. "I must have been
sent here for something."

"I believe you were, dear," said Stephen, "sent here for my salvation. I
was thinking last night that, no matter if my life should end without my
ever knowing what other men call happiness, if I must live lonely and
alone to the end, I should still have the memory of you,--of your face,
of your hand, and the voice in which you said you cared for me. O Mercy,