Old Rose and Silver Part 40

he pleaded. "Please--oh, please!"

Trembling from head to foot, she obeyed him, but her face was pitiful.

She could not force herself to look at him. "Forgive," she murmured, "and forget."

The hand he took in his was cold, but her nearness gave him comfort, as never before. His heart was unspeakably tender toward her.

"Rose," he went on, softly, "I've been too near the other world not to have the truth now. Tell me what you mean! Make me understand!"

She did not answer, nor even lift her eyes. She breathed hard, as though she were in pain.

"Rose," he said again, tightening his clasp upon the hand she tried to draw away, "did you mean that you would be my--"

"In name," she interrupted, throwing up her head proudly. "Just to help you--that was all."

He drew her hand to his hot lips and kissed it twice. "Oh, how divinely kind you are," he whispered, "even to think of stooping to such as I!"

"Have pity," she said brokenly, "and let me go."

"Pity?" he repeated. "In all the world there is none like yours. To think of your being willing to sacrifice yourself, through pity of me!"

The blood came back into her heart by leaps and bounds. She had not utterly betrayed herself, then, since he translated it thus.

"Listen," he was saying. "I cared--terribly, but it's gone, and my heart is empty. It's like an open grave, waiting for something that does not come. Did you ever care?"

"Yes," she answered, with eyes downcast.

"Did you care for someone who did not care for you?"

"Yes," she replied, again.

"And he never knew?"

"No." The word was almost a whisper.

"He must have been a brute, not to have cared. Was it long ago?"

"Not very."

"Have I ever met him?"

The suggestion of an ironical smile hovered for a moment around her pale lips, then vanished. "No."

"I have no right to--to ask his name."

"No. What difference does a name make?"

"None. Could you never bring yourself to care for anyone else?"

"No," she breathed. "Oh, no!"

"And yet, with your heart as empty as mine you still have pity enough to--"

"To serve you," she answered. Her eyes met his clearly now. "To help you--as your best friend might."

"Rose, dear Rose! You give me new courage, but how can I let you sacrifice yourself for me?" "Believe me," she said diffidently, "there is no question of sacrifice. Have you never thought of what you might do, that would be even better than the career you had planned?"

"Why, no. What could I do, without--"

"Write," she said, with her eyes s.h.i.+ning. "Let others play what you write. Immortality comes by way of the printed page."

"I couldn't," he returned, doubtfully.

"I never composed anything except two or three little things that I never dared to play, even for encores."

"Never say you can't. Say 'I must,' and 'I will.'"

"You're saying them for me. You almost make me believe in myself."

"That's the very best of beginnings, isn't it?"

She was quite calm now, outwardly, and she drew her hand away. Allison remembered the long, happy hours they had spent together before Isabel came into his life. Now that she was gone, the old comrades.h.i.+p had returned, the sweeter because of long absence. Rose had never fretted nor annoyed him; she seemed always to understand.

"You don't know how glad I'd be," he sighed, "to feel that I wasn't quite out of it--that there was something in life for me still. I didn't want to be a bit of driftwood on the current of things."

"You're not going to be--I won't let you. Haven't you learned that sometimes we have to wait; that we can't always be going on? Just moor your soul at the landing place, and when the hour comes, you'll swing out into the current again. Much of the driftwood is only craft that broke away from the landing."

He smiled, for her fancy pleased him. An abiding sense of companions.h.i.+p crept into his loneliness; his isolation seemed to be shared. "And you'll stay at the landing with me," he whispered, "until the time comes to set sail again?"

"Yes."

"And--after the worst that can come--is over, we'll make it right with the world and go abroad together?"

"Yes." Her voice was very low now.

"And we'll be the best of friends, for always?"

"Yes--the best of friends in all the world."

"And you'll promise me that, if you're ever sorry, you'll come straight and tell me--that you'll ask me to set you free?"

"I promise."

"Then everything is all right between you and me?"

"Yes, but I'm ashamed--bitterly ashamed."

"You mustn't be, for I'm very glad. We'll try to forget the wreckage together. I couldn't have asked, unless I had known about--the other man, and you wouldn't have told me, I know. It wouldn't have been like you to tell me."

There was a knock, the door opened, and the nurse came in, watch in hand. "I'm sorry, Miss Bernard, but you can come to-morrow if he's well enough."