She tried to break away, and finding it impossible, pressed both hands over her face and hid it against his shoulder.

He laughed, and whispered: 

“My darling, I know what that means.  You dare not look up because you cannot trust your own eyes!  Because you dread for me to see something there which you want to hide, which you think it your duty to conceal.”

He felt a long shudder creep over her, and she answered resolutely: 

“Do you think, sir, that I could love a murderer?  A man whose hands are red with the blood of the son of my best friend?”

“Look at me then.”

He raised her head, drew down her hands, took them firmly in one of his, and placing the other under her chin, lifted the burning face close to his own.

She dreaded the power of his lustrous, mesmeric eyes, and instantly her long silky lashes swept her flushed cheeks.

“Ah! you dare not!  You can not look me steadily in the eye and say, ‘St. Elmo, I never have loved—­do not—­and never can love you!’ You are too truthful; your lips can not dissemble.  I know you do not want to love me.  Your reason, your conscience forbid it; you are struggling to crush your heart.  You think it your duty to despise and hate me.  But, my own, Edna—­my darling! my darling! you do love me!  You know you do love me, though you will not confess it!  My proud darling!”

He drew the face tenderly to his own, and kissed her quivering lips repeatedly, and at last a moan of anguish told how she was wrestling with her heart.

“Do you think you can hide your love from my eager eyes?  Oh!  I know that I am unworthy of you!  I feel it more and more every day, every hour.  It is because you seem so noble—­so holy—­to my eyes, that I reverence while I love you.  You are so far above all other women—­so glorified in your pure, consistent piety—­that you only have the power to make my future life—­redeem the wretched and sinful past.  I tempted and tried you, and when you proved so true and honest and womanly, you kindled a faint beam of hope that, after all, there might be truth and saving, purifying power in religion.  Do you know that since this church was finished I have never entered it until a month ago, when I followed you here, and crouched downstairs—­ yonder, behind one of the pillars, and heard your sacred songs, your hymns so full of grandeur, so full of pathos, that I could not keep back my tears while I listened.  Since then I have come every Saturday afternoon, and during the hour spent here my unholy nature was touched and softened as no sermon ever touched it.  Oh! you wield a power over me—­over all my future, which ought to make you tremble!  The first generous impulse that has stirred my callous, bitter soul since I was a boy, I owe to you.  I went first to see poor Reed, in order to discover what took you so often to that cheerless place; and my interest in little Huldah arose from the fact that you loved the child.  Oh, my darling!  I know I have been sinful and cruel and blasphemous; but it is not too late for me to atone!  It is not too late for me to do some good in the world; and if you will only love me, and trust me, and help me—­”