Just lately I have been forced to study myself. It is as if--it seems
to me as if events had conspired against my own crass ignorance of
myself, as if a resolve had been come to by the power that directs our
destinies that I should know myself. I wish I dared to tell you more.
I wish to-night I dared to tell you all that I have come to know. But
I dare not, I dare not. You would not believe me. I could not even
expect you to believe me."
He stopped. Perhaps he hoped for a word that would deny his last
observation. But it did not come to him. And he hesitated for what
seemed to him a very long time, almost an eternity. He was beset by
indecision, by an extraordinary deep modesty and consciousness of his
own unworthiness that he had never before experienced, and also by a
new and acute consciousness of the splendor of Hermione's nature, of
the power of her heart, of the faithfulness and nobility of her
temperament.
"All I can say, Hermione"--he at length went on speaking, and in his
voice sounded that strange modesty, a modesty that made his voice seem
to her almost like a voice of hesitating youth--"all that I dare to
say to-night is this.
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