“It was incredible how cold and unsympathizing and dull he could be,” she went on.  “Once, after she had worked a week in secret to surprise him with a dressing-gown made by her own hands—­labored a week, waited and hoped a week for one word of praise—­he only said, ‘It is too short.’  Don’t you think it was cruel?  It was.  I suppose he soon forgot it, but she never could.  A woman cannot forget such slights:  they do not seem little blows to her; they make her very soul bleed.”

“Don’t reproach me for it,” whispered the young man with a pleading smile.  “You seem to be reproving me, and I can’t bear it.  I am not guilty.”

“Oh, not you,” she answered quickly.  “I am not scolding you.  I could not.”

She did not mean it, but she gave him a smile of indescribable sweetness:  she had had no intention of putting out her hands toward him, but she did it.  He seized the delicate fingers and slowly drew her against his heart.  Her face crimson with feeling, her whole form trembling to the tiniest vein, she rose to her feet, turning away her head as if to fly, and yet did not escape, and could not wish to escape.  Holding her in his arm, he poured into her ear a murmur which was not words, it was so much more than words.

“Oh, could you truly love me?” she at last sobbed.  “Could you keep loving me?”

After a while some painful recollection seemed to awaken her from this dream of happiness, and, drawing herself out of his embrace, she looked him sadly in the eyes, saying, “I must not be so weak.  I must save myself and you from misery.  Oh, I must.  Go now—­leave me for a while:  do go.  I must have time to think before I say another word to you.”

“Good-bye, my love—­soon to be my wife,” he answered, stifling with a kiss the “No, no,” which she tried to utter.

Although he meant to go, and although she was wretchedly anxious that he should go, he was far from gone.  All across the room, at every square of the threadbare carpet, they halted to renew their talk.  Minutes passed, an hour had flown, and still he was there.  And when he at last softly opened the door, she herself closed it, saying, “Oh no! not yet.”

So greedy is a loving woman for love, so much does she hate to lose the breath of it from her soul:  to let it be withdrawn is like consenting to die when life is sweetest.

Thus it was through her, who had bidden him to go, and who had meant that he should go, that he remained for minutes longer, dropping into her ear whispers of love which at last drew out her confession of love.  And when the parting moment came—­that moment of woman’s life in which she least belongs to herself—­there was not in this woman a single reservation of feeling or purpose.

These people, who were so madly in love with each other, were almost strangers.  The man was Charles Leighton, a native of Northport, who had never gone farther from his home than to Boston, and there only to graduate in the Harvard College and Medical School.