It seemed to be all one
present--one awful and torturing _now_. So it is with me. Desmond is
always here'--he pointed to the vacant space by the window--'and you
are always sitting by him. And I know that if you go away--and I am
left alone with my poor boy--though I shall never cease to hear the
things he said to me--the things he asked me to do--I shall have no
strength to do them. I cannot rise and walk--unless you help me.'
Elizabeth could hardly speak. She was in presence of that tremendous
thing in human experience--the emergence of a man's inmost self.
That the Squire could speak so--could feel so--that the man whose
pupil and bond-slave she had been in those early weeks should be
making this piteous claim upon her, throwing upon her the weight of
his whole future life, of his sorrow, of his reaction against
himself, overwhelmed her. It appealed to that instinctive, that
boundless tenderness which lies so deep in the true woman.
But her will seemed paralysed. She did not know how to act--she
could find no words that pleased her.
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