I dreaded,
above all things, that he should suspect my feelings. Sometimes I met
him coldly; sometimes I received his confidences with an indifferent
and weary air. This could not last.
One night--it was a little time before he left us--he begged me to walk
with him once more under the lindens. I made many excuses, but he
overruled them all. We left the brilliantly-lighted rooms and stood
beneath the solemn shadow of the trees. It was a warm, soft night; the
harvest moon shone down upon us; a south wind moaned among the
branches. We walked silently on till we reached a rustic seat, formed
of gnarled boughs fantastically bound together; here he made me sit
down and placed himself beside me.
"Juanita," he said, in a tone so soft, so thrillingly musical, that I
shall never forget it, "what has come between us? Are you no longer my
friend?"
I tried to answer him, and could not; love and grief choked my
utterance.
"Look at me," he said.
I looked. The moon shone full on his face; his eyes were bent on mine.
What a serpent-charm lurked in their treacherous blue depths! If,
looking at me thus, he had bidden me kill myself at his feet, I must
have done it.
"Juanita," he said, with a smile of conscious power, "you love me! But
why should that destroy our happiness?"
He held out his arms; I threw myself on his bosom in an agony of shame
and joy.
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