"Thank you," he said simply, a great withdrawing in his tone. "But I cannot see how you can think well of me. I am an utter stranger to you. I have no right to talk of such things to you."
"You did not tell me," answered Hazel. "You told--God." Her voice was slow and low with awe. "I only overheard. It was my fault--but--I am not--sorry. It was a great--thing to hear!"
He watched her shy dignity as she talked, her face drooping and half turned away. She was exquisitely beautiful in her confusion. His whole spirit yearned towards hers.
"I feel like a monster," he said suddenly. "You know I love you, but you do not understand how, in this short time even, you have filled my life, my whole being. And yet I may not ever try or hope to win your love in return. It must seem strange to you----"
"I think I understand," she said in a low voice; "you spoke of all that in the night--you know." It seemed as if she shrank from hearing it again.
"Will you let me explain it thoroughly to you?"
"If--you think best." She turned her face away and watched the eagle, now a mere speck in the distance.
"You see it is this way. I am not free to do as I might wish--as other men are free. I have consecrated my life to the service of God in this place. I know--I knew when I came here--that it was no place to bring a woman. There are few who could stand the life. It is filled with privations and hardships. They are inevitable. You are used to tender care and luxury. No man could ask a sacrifice like that of a woman he loved. He would not be a man if he did. It is not like marrying a girl who has felt the call herself, and loves to give her life to the work. That would be a different matter. But a man has no right to expect it of a woman----" he paused to find the right words and Hazel in a small still voice of dignity reminded him: "You are forgetting one of the reasons."
"Forgetting?" he turned towards her wonderingly and their eyes met for just an instant, then hers were turned away again.
"Yes," she went on inscrutably. "You thought I--was not--fit!"
She was pulling up bits of green from the ground beside her. She felt a frightened flutter in her throat. It was the point of the thorn that had remained in her heart. It was not in nature for her not to speak of it, yet when it was spoken she felt how it might be misunderstood.