"
"No, indeed no! It was a wicked, horrible chance! Don't charge your God
with it."
His smile was very sweet, but it paid the least possible attention. "You
did love me," he said. He spoke as if he were already dead.
"I did indeed," Hilda replied, and bent her shamed head upon her hands
again in the confession. It is not strange that he heard only the
affirmation in it.
He stroked her hair. "It is good to know that," he said, "very good. I
should have married you." He went on with sudden boldness and a new note
of strength in his voice. "Think of that! You would have been mine--to
protect and work for. We should have gone together to England--where I
could easily have got a curacy--easily."
Hilda looked-up. "Would you like to marry me now?" she asked eagerly,
but he shook his head. "You don't understand," he said. "It is the dear
sin God has turned my back upon."
Then it came to her that he had asked for no caress. He was going
unassoiled to his God, with the divine indifference of the dying. Only
his imagination looked backward and forward. And she thought, "It is a
little light flame that I have lit with my own taper that has gone out,
and presently the grave will extinguish that.
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