rs in her sweet eyes.
"Have I not done what I wanted to do?" she said. "I found you weak,
friendless, ill; you have got back your strength, and you know that you
have at least one friend who will be faithful to you. My task is done;
you must go away now and fight the world--for my sake."
"For your sake? You care what I do, then: Lettice, you care for me? Tell
me that you love me--tell me, at last!"
She was silent for a moment, and he felt that the hand which rested on
his own fluttered as if it would take itself away. Was she offended?
Would she withdraw the mute caress of that soft pressure? Breathlessly
he waited. If she took her hand away, he thought that he should almost
cease to hope.
But the hand settled once more into its place. It even tightened its
pressure upon his fingers as she replied--
"I love you with all my heart," she said; "and it is just because I love
you that I want you to go away."
With a quick turn of his wrist he seized the hand that had hitherto lain
on his, and carried it to his lips. They looked into each other's eyes
with the long silent look which is more expressive even than a kiss.
Soul draws very near to soul when the eyes of man and woman meet as
theirs met then. The lips did not meet, but Alan's face was very close
to hers. When the pause had lasted so long that Lettice's eyelids
drooped, and the spell of the look was broken, he spoke again.
"Why should I go away? Why should the phantom of a dead past divide us?
We belong to one another, you and I. Think of what life might mean to
us, side by side, hand in hand, working, striving together, you the
stronger, giving me some of your strength, I ready to give you the love
you need--the love you have craved for--the love that you have won!
Lettice, Lettice, neither God nor man can divide us now!"
"Hush! you are talking wildly," she answered, in a very gentle tone.
"Listen to me, Alan. There is one point in which you are wrong. You
speak of a dead past. But the past is not dead, it lives for you still
in the person of--your wife."
"And you think that she should stand in our way? After all that she has
done? Can any law, human or divine, bind me to her now? Surely her own
acts have set me free. Lettice, my darling, do not be blinded by
conventional views of right and wrong. I know that if we had loved each
other and she had been a woman of blameless life, I should not be
justified in asking you to sacrifice for me all that t
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