"Let me sit down," he said unwilling to leave her; "I am tired." He was
terribly afraid of himself and shaken by a storm of passion, which left
his sensitive body feeble.
She sat down with him on a great trunk wrecked a century ago. "Are you
not well?" she asked, observing the paleness of his face.
"No, it is nothing. I am not very well, but it is nothing of moment.
Don't let it trouble you--I am much as usual. I want, Leila, what I
cannot get--what I ought not to get." Even this approach to fuller
confession relieved him.
"What is there, my dear Mr. Rivers, you cannot get? Oh! you are a man to
envy with your hold on men, your power to charm, your eloquence. I have
heard Dr. McGregor talk of what you were among the wounded and the dying
on the firing-line. Don't you know that you are one of God's helpful
messengers, an interpreter into terms of human thought and words of what
men need to-day, when--"
"No, no," he broke in, lifting a hand of dissenting protest. The flushed
young face as she spoke, his sense of being nobly considered by this
earnest young woman had again made him feel how just the little more
would have set free in ardent words what he was honestly striving to
control.
"Thank you, my dear Leila, I could wish I were all you think I am; but
were it all true, there would remain things that sweeten life and which
must always be forbidden to me.
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