In spite of her quickness, Van Berg occasionally caught something
of this expression, and while he drew encouragement from it, he
was too free from vanity and too acute an observer to conclude that
all would result as he hoped. The unwelcome thought would come
that he was only the occasion and not the cause, of these furtive
glances. Was her heart already wedded to a memory, and was she
interested in him chiefly because for some reason he gave vividness
and reality to that memory? If this were true, what more had he to
hope for than Stanton? If this were true, was he not in a certain
sense pursuing a shadow? Woud success be success? Would he wish
to clasp, as his wife, a woman whose heart had been buried in a
sepulchre from which the stone might never be rolled away?
His first impression, that Miss Burton had passed through
some experience, some ordeal of suffering that separated her from
ordinary humanity, often reasserted itself more strongly than ever.
At times her flame-like spirit would flash up with a glow and
brilliancy that lighted and warmed his very soul, but the feeling
began to grow upon him that this genial fire consumed the costliest
of all offerings--self.
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