you, but—­I didn’t know it would be like this.  I was never in love, and I did not know.  I could think of nothing but wanting you.  It was spoiling me for everything else, and there are other things in the world besides this.  If I came much longer I should not be fit to come.  I could not come any longer.”  Jerome looked down at Lucina, with an air of stern, yet wistful, argument.  She sat before him with downcast, pale, and sober face, then she rose, and all her girlish irresolution and shame dropped from her, and left for a moment the woman in her unveiled.

“I love you as much as you love me,” she said, simply.

Jerome looked at her.  “You—­don’t mean—­that?”

“Yes, I suppose I did when you told me first, but I did not know it then.  Now I know it.  I have been very unhappy because I feared you might be staying away because you thought I did not love you, but I dared not try to see you as I did before, because I had found myself out.  To-day I could not help it, whatever you might think of me, or whatever I might think of myself.  I could not bear to worry any longer, lest you might be unhappy because you thought I did not love you.  I do, and you need not stay away any more for that.”

“Lucina—­you don’t mean—­”

“Do you think I would have let you—­do as you did a minute ago, if I had not?” said she, and a blush spread over her face and neck.

“I—­thought—­it was all—­me—­that—­you—­did not—­”

“No, I let you,” whispered Lucina.

“Oh, you don’t mean that you—­like me this same way that I do you—­enough to marry me!  You don’t mean that?”

“Yes, I do,” replied Lucina; she looked up at him with a curious solemn steadfastness.  She was not blushing any more.

“I—­never thought of this,” Jerome said, drawing a long, sobbing breath.  He stood looking at her, his face all white and working.  “Lucina,” he began, then paused, for he could not speak.  He walked a little way down the path, then came back.  “Lucina,” he said, brokenly, “as God is my witness—­I never thought of this—­I never—­thought that you—­could—­ Oh, look at yourself, and look at me!  You know that I could not have thought—­oh, look at yourself, there was never anybody like you!  I did not think that you could—­care for or—­be hurt by—­me.”

“I have never seen anybody like you, not even father,” Lucina said.  She looked at him with the shrinking yet loving faithfulness of a child before emotion which it cannot comprehend.  She could not understand why, if Jerome loved her and she him, there was anything to be distressed about.  She could not imagine why he was so pale and agitated, why he did not take her in his arms and kiss her again, why they could not both be happy at once.

“Oh, my God!” cried Jerome, and looked at her in a way which frightened her.

“Don’t,” she said, softly, shrinking a little.

“Lucina, you know how poor I am,” he said, hoarsely.  “You know I—­can’t—­marry.”