I am not so selfish as to lament it; but you will not wish me to be there to see it when I tell you that I have been fool enough to dare to love you myself.  It is the folly of a madman, is it not? since I have never had the slightest hope or entertained the faintest wish to alter the conditions of your life; nor have I even asked myself what effect such a confession as this that you have wrung from me can have upon you.  Whether it excites your pity or your contempt, or even your amusement, it cannot in any case make any difference to me.  My folly, at all events, cannot hurt you or my brother; it can hurt no one but myself:  it cannot even signify to you.  It is only for my own sake that I am going, because one cannot bear more than a certain amount, can one?  I thought I might have been strong enough, but I find that it would be too much; that is all.  You will not ask me to stay any more, will you?”

Not once had he looked at her; not by a single sign or token had he betrayed the slightest emotion or agitation.  His voice had been steady and unbroken; he spoke in a low and somewhat monotonous manner; it was as though he had been relating something that in no way concerned himself—­some story that was of some other, and that other of no great interest either to him who told it or to her who listened to the tale.  Any one suddenly coming into the room would have guessed him to be entirely engrossed in the contemplation of the little dog between his hands; that he was relating the story of his own heart would not have been imagined for an instant.

When he had done speaking there was an absolute silence in the room.  What he had spoken seemed to admit of no answer of any sort or kind from his listener.  He had asked for nothing; he had pleaded neither for her sympathy nor her forgiveness, far less for any definite expression of the effect of his words upon her.  He had not, seemingly, cared to know how they affected her.  He had simply told his own story—­that was all; it concerned no one but himself.  She might pity him, she might even be amused at him, as he had said:  anyhow, it made no difference to him; he had chosen to present a picture of his inner life to her as a doctor might have described some complicated disease to a chance acquaintance—­it was a physiological study, if she cared to look upon it as such; if not, it did not matter.  There was no possible answer that she could make to him; no form of words by which she could even acknowledge that she had heard him speak.

She stood perfectly silent for the space of some two or three seconds; she scarcely breathed, her very heart seemed to have ceased to beat; it was as if she had been turned to stone.  She knew not what she felt; it was neither pain, nor joy, nor regret; it was only a sort of dull apathy that oppressed her very being.

Presently she put forth her hands, almost mechanically, and reached her cloak and hat from the chair behind her.