"A man has no right to tell a woman he loves her when he cannot ask her to marry him."
"That," said the girl, her throat throbbing painfully, "that has nothing to do with it. I--was--not talking about--marrying! But I think she has a right to know. It would--make a difference all her life!" Her throat was dry and throbbing. The words seemed to stick as she tried to utter them, yet they would be said. She longed to hide her burning face in some cool shelter and get away from this terrible talk, but she could only sit rigidly quiet, her fingers fastened tensely in the coarse grass at her side.
There was a longer silence now, and still she dared not look at the man.
A great eagle appeared in the heaven above and sailed swiftly and strongly towards a mountain peak. Hazel had a sense of her own smallness, and of the fact that her words had made an exquisite anguish for the soul of her companion, yet she could not think of anything to say that would better matters. At last he spoke, and his voice was like one performing a sad and sacred rite for one tenderly beloved: "And now that you know I love you can it possibly make any difference to you?"
Hazel tried three times to answer, but every time her trembling lips would frame no words. Then suddenly her face went into her hands and the tears came. She felt as if a benediction had been laid upon her head, and the glory of it was greater than she could bear.
The man watched her, his arms longing to enfold her and soothe her agitation, but he would not. His heart was on fire with the sweetness and the pain of the present moment, yet he could not take advantage of their situation upon the lonely plain, and desecrate the beauty of the trust she had put upon him.
Then her strength came again, and she raised her head and looked into his waiting eyes with a trembling, shy glance, yet true and earnest.
"It will make a difference--to me!" she said. "I shall never feel quite the same towards life again because I know there is such a wonderful man in the world."
She had fine control of her voice now, and was holding back the tears. Her manner of the world was coming to her aid. He must not see how much this was to her, how very much. She put out a little cold hand and laid it timidly in his big brown one, and he held it a moment and looked down at it in great tenderness, closed his fingers over it in a strong clasp, then laid it gently back in her lap as though it were too precious to keep. Her heart thrilled and thrilled again at his touch.