rld--that she could no longer give him calm and unbiased judgment. He
heard, and the burning tide of a new joy rushed on him, checked almost
ere it was known, by the dread lest for her sake she should ever give
him so much pity that such pity became love.

He started to his feet and looked down imploringly into her eyes--a look
under which her own never quailed or drooped, but which they answered
with that same regard which she had given him when she had declared her
faith in his innocence.

"If I thought it possible you could ever care----"

She moved slightly from him; her face was very white still, and her
voice, though serenely sustained, shook as it answered him.

"If I could--believe me, I am not a woman who would bid you forsake your
honor to spare yourself or me. Let us speak no more of this. What can it
avail, except to make you suffer greater things? Follow the counsels of
your own conscience. You have been true to them hitherto; it is not for
me, or through me, that you shall ever be turned aside from them."

A bitter sigh broke from him as he heard.

"They are noble words. And yet it is so easy to utter, so hard to follow
them. If you had one thought of tenderness for me, you could not speak
them."

A flush passed over her face.

"Do not think me without feeling--without sympathy--pity--"

"These are not love."

She was silent; they were, in a sense, nearer to love than any emotion
she had ever known.

"If you loved me," he pursued passionately--"ah, God! the very word from
me to you sounds insult; and yet there is not one thought in me that
does not honor you--if you loved me, could you stand there and bid me
drag on this life forever; nameless, friendless, hopeless; having all
the bitterness, but none of the torpor of death; wearing out the doom of
a galley slave, though guiltless of all crime?"

"Why speak so? You are unreasoning. A moment ago you implored me not to
tempt you to the violation of what you hold your honor; because I bid
you be faithful to it, you deem me cruel!"

"Heaven help me! I scarce know what I say. I ask you, if you were a
woman who loved me, could you decide thus?"

"These are wild questions," she murmured; "what can they serve? I
believe that I should--I am sure that I should. As it is--as your
friend--"

"Ah, hush! Friendship is crueler than hate."

"Cruel?"

"Yes; the worst cruelty when we seek love--a stone proffered us when we
ask for bread in famine!"