"
"Isn't that rather a hard punishment for him, Lois?"
"For him?"
"I, too, will be honest. I know whom you mean and I ask you--does
Stafford look a happy man? He looks like a man weighed down by a heavy
burden. I believe that burden is the knowledge that he has sinned
against you, that in his heedlessness, folly, what you will, he has
spoiled your life. Until he feels that you have regained your
happiness he will never be able to find his own."
A spasm of pain passed over her face.
"You mean--I stand in his way?"
"I believe so. And I am sure of one thing--for your own sake as well
as for his, you must shake off your old affection for him, and how
better than through the cultivation of a new and stronger love? My
dear little girl, you couldn't pretend that all the happy hours we
have spent together count for nothing. You say my friendship has been
a great deal to you. What else is friendship but the sanest, most
lasting, and noblest part of love? What surer basis was ever the union
between a man and woman built upon? I know what you would say--it has
come too soon. You have only just pulled yourself up from a hard blow,
and you feel that you must have time to right yourself and all the
hopes that were bowled over with you. My dear, I understand that--God
knows, I understand too well--but have pity on me. Think how I have
waited, and how time has drifted on and on for me. Must I wait the
best years of my life? Won't you let me add the whole of my love to
time's cure for healing the old wound?"
There was no pretense in his pleading, no pretense in the passion with
which his voice shook.
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