Until this evening his heart had remained sluggish. Sweet and
potent as her voice had been, it had not penetrated to the "holy
of holies" within his soul. But had not her low sad tones echoed
there to-night in the half involuntary confidence she had given
him?
In his deep sympathy, in the answering feeling evoked by her strong
but repressed emotion, he thought his heart had been stirred to
its depths, and that henceforth its chief desire would be to banish
the sorrowful memories typified to her mind by the black clouds
above him. Had his face revealed this impulse of his heart before
he had been fully conscious of it himself? Was it an unwelcome
discovery, that she so hastily fled from it? Or had she been only
startled--her maidenly reserve shrinking from the first fore-shadowing
of the supreme request that she should unveil the mysteries of her
life to one who but now had been a stranger? He did not know. He
felt he scarcely understood her or himself; but he was conscious
of a hope that both might meet their happy fate in each other.
He leaned thus for a time absorbed in thought against a pillar where
she had left him, then sauntered with bowed head and preoccupied
manner to the main entrance, down the steps and out into the darkness.
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