h, what sad words!" said Dorothea, with a dangerous tendency to sob.
Then trying to smile, she added, "We used to agree that we were alike
in speaking too strongly."

"I have not spoken too strongly now," said Will, leaning back against
the angle of the wall. "There are certain things which a man can only
go through once in his life; and he must know some time or other that
the best is over with him. This experience has happened to me while I
am very young--that is all. What I care more for than I can ever care
for anything else is absolutely forbidden to me--I don't mean merely
by being out of my reach, but forbidden me, even if it were within my
reach, by my own pride and honor--by everything I respect myself for.
Of course I shall go on living as a man might do who had seen heaven in
a trance."

Will paused, imagining that it would be impossible for Dorothea to
misunderstand this; indeed he felt that he was contradicting himself
and offending against his self-approval in speaking to her so plainly;
but still--it could not be fairly called wooing a woman to tell her
that he would never woo her. It must be admitted to be a ghostly kind
of wooing.

But Dorothea's mind was rapidly going over the past with quite another
vision than his. The thought that she herself might be what Will most
cared for did throb through her an instant, but then came doubt: the
memory of the little they had lived through together turned pale and
shrank before the memory which suggested how much fuller might have
been the intercourse between Will and some one else with whom he had
had constant companionship. Everything he had said might refer to that
other relation, and whatever had passed between him and herself was
thoroughly explained by what she had always regarded as their simple
friendship and the cruel obstruction thrust upon it by her husband's
injurious act. Dorothea stood silent, with her eyes cast down
dreamily, while images crowded upon her which left the sickening
certainty that Will was referring to Mrs. Lydgate. But why sickening?
He wanted her to know that here too his conduct should be above
suspicion.

Will was not surprised at her silence. His mind also was tumultuously
busy while he watched her, and he was feeling rather wildly that
something must happen to hinder their parting--some miracle, clearly
nothing in their own deliberate speech. Yet, after all, had she any
love for him?--he could not pretend to hims