“You fancied that I-that I-liked you; and you knew I did not want to go home, and you pitied me:  and I won’t have it, sir.  I do not need pity, and I do not”—­

Her voice died away, killed by the falsehood she could not speak.  Mr. Burroughs no longer pressed for an answer to the question he had asked, but grasped at a new argument.

“Pity and kindness!” sadly repeated he.  “Dora, if you only knew how much more I stand in need of your pity than you of mine, if you only knew what kindness your life has already done mine, you would not treat me in this manner.”

“You need my pity!” exclaimed Dora, forgetting herself, and turning to look at him in na‹ve astonishment; “and for what?”

“For a purposeless and weary life; for an empty heart and a corroded faith,” said her lover bitterly; “for an indifference to men, amounting almost to aversion; for a trifling estimate of women, amounting almost to contempt; for wasted abilities and neglected opportunities,—­for all these, Dora, I need your pity, and have a right to claim it:  for it is only since I loved you that I have recognized my own great needs and deficiencies.  Complete the work you have unconsciously begun, dearest.  Reverse the fairy fable, and let the beautiful princess come to waken with her kiss the slothful prince, who else might sleep forever.”

“How can you know so soon that I am the princess?” asked Dora shyly.

“So soon!  I felt the truth stirring blindly in my heart that first night, now a year ago, when I saw you in the old home, and read your candid eyes, and heard your clear voice, and marked your steady and serene influence upon all about you.  I hardly knew it then; but, when I was away from you, I was myself surprised to find how vivid your impression upon my mind remained.  When my cousin asked me to accompany her here, I silently resolved, that, before I returned home, I would see you again; would study as deeply as I might the character I already guessed.  Then, Dora, when I saw you, as I have seen you in these last weeks, struggling so nobly to render complete the sacrifice you came hither to make; when I saw the sweetness, the power, the loftiness, and the divine truth, of your nature, shining more clearly day by day, and yourself the only one unconscious of the priceless value of such a nature,—­then, Dora, I came to know for truth what I tell you now, God hearing me, that you are the woman of all the world whom I love, honor, and undeservingly long to make my own.  Once more, Dora,—­and you cannot now refuse to answer me at least,—­once more I ask, do you or can you love me?”

He grasped her hands in both his own, and his keen eyes read her very soul.  She raised hers as steadily to meet them; and, though the hot blush seemed to scorch her very brow, she answered,—­

“I did not know it, quite, until to-day; but I believe-I think-I have cared about you ever since a year ago.  That is, not love; but every one else seemed less than they had been:  and since I knew you here, and since I thought I must go home, and never see you any more, it was”—­