" Still she hesitated and found it almost as hard to obtain
words or courage now as when she saw him pulling apart the worm-eaten
rosebud. At last she faltered:
"Mr. Van Berg, are you ill?"
He started to his feet with a dazed look and passed his hand across
his brow--the same gesture she so well remembered seeing him make
at the close of the happy evening he had spent at her home. As he
realized that the maiden before him was flesh and blood, and not
a creation of his morbid fancy, the hot blood rushed swiftly into
his face, and his eyes fell before her.
"Yes, Miss Mayhew, I am," he said, briefly.
"I am very sorry. Can I not do anything for you?" she asked,
kindly.
He looked up at her in strong surprise, and was still more perplexed
by the sympathetic expression of her face, but he only said, "I
regret to say you cannot."
"Mr. Van Berg," said Ida, in tones full of distress, "your words
and appearance pain me exceedingly. You look as if you had been
ill a month. What has happened?" His aspect might trouble one
less interested in him than herself, for his eyes were blood-shot,
and he had become so haggard that she could scarcely realize that
he was the man who but four days previous had compared his hearty
merriment with the "laughter of the gods.
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