When she
finally appeared in soft brown merino, with a deep fichu of old, dark
lace, and black ribbons, she courageously held out a delightfully cool,
smooth hand. "At first," she said directly, "I thought it would be
better not to see you at all. Yet that wasn't genteel; and I felt, too,
that I must speak to you. Even at the danger, perhaps, of trespassing
into your privacy."
"I have given you the absolute right to do that," he told her. "It will
only bring me pleasure, to--to suppose I interest you enough--"
"Ah, but you do," she cried with clasping fingers. "It has made my work
here very difficult; the quiet has gone before echoes that I think every
child must hear, echoes from spaces and things that appall me. Here, you
see, I have lived so apart from others, perhaps selfishly, that I had
grown accustomed to a false sense of peace. Only lessons and little
questions, little hands. It seems now that I have been outside of life
itself, in a cowardly seclusion. Yet it had always been that way; I
didn't know." Her face was deeply troubled, the clear depths of her eyes
held a new questioning doubt.
"It's because of that, mainly, I ask you to marry me," he replied,
standing before the table at which, unconsciously, she had taken her
place; "it is because of your astonishing purity.
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