“Why, no.  I had not thought anything about it.  I am afraid I have not thought much about anything this winter.  I must have been very ungrateful, as well as childish, for I never have felt as if it were fortunate that I had a home, and as much money as I wanted.  I did not care anything about being rich, you know—­ever.”

“No, I know you did not.  I was sure you would have been satisfied with a very moderate provision.”

“Oh, Richard,” I cried, clasping my hands together, “if he had left me a little—­just a little—­just a few hundred dollars, when he had so much, to have kept me from having to work, when I don’t know how to work, and am such a child.”

“Work!” he exclaimed, looking down at me as if I were something so exquisite and so precious, that the very thought was profanation.  “Work! no, Pauline, you shall not have to work.”

“But what can I do?” I said, “I have nothing—­and you know it; not a shelter; not the money to pay for my breakfast to-morrow morning.  Not a person to whom I have a right to go for help; not a human being who is bound to care for me.  Oh, I don’t care what becomes of me; I wish that it were time for me to die.”

Richard got up, and paced up and down the little platform with an absorbed look.

“It was so strange,” I went on, “when he seemed this winter to take a little notice of me, and to want to have me near him.  I really almost thought he cared for me.  And when I was so ill last Fall, don’t you remember how often he used to come up to my room?”

“I remember—­yes.  It is all very strange.”

“And some days early in the winter, when I could scarcely speak at table, I was so unhappy, he would look at me so long, and seem to think.  And then would be very kind and gentle afterward, and do something to show he liked me—­give me money, you know, as he always did.”

“Tell me, Pauline:  did he ever ask you anything about last summer, or did you ever tell him?”

“No, Richard, I could never have spoken to him about it; and he never asked me.  But I know he saw that I was not happy.”

“Pauline,” said Richard, after a pause, and as if forcing himself to speak, “there is no use in disguising from you what your position is:  you know it yourself, enough of it, at least, to make you understand why I speak now.  I don’t know of any way out of it, but one; and I feel as if it were ungenerous to press that on you now, and, Heaven knows, I would not do it if I could think of anything else to offer to you.  You know, Pauline, that if you will marry me, you will have everything that you need, as much as if your uncle had left you everything.”

He did not look at me, but paced up and down the platform, and spoke with a thick, husky voice.

“You know it’s been the object of my life, ever since I knew you, but I don’t want that to influence you.  I know it is too soon, a great deal too soon.  And I would not have done it, if I could have seen anything else to do, or if you could have done without me.”