"
"I can understand that," said Edward, "but the influences of
unworldliness--I was almost saying other-worldliness--are nowhere felt
as in the woods. Sometimes they exert a strange spell upon me. The
petty pride and shallow subterfuges of fashionable life are impossible
in nature's solitudes. Don't you think so?"
"Yes;" assented Helene, not seeing whither her unthinking acquiescence
might lead her.
"That is why I dare to ask you why you have been so cold and formal
towards me, so unlike your old self, for the last three months?"
No petty pride could help her now, no shallow subterfuges come to her
aid. She had declared that they were impossible here. She could not
turn her face away from his truth-compelling gaze. Why had Rose left
her alone to be tortured in this dreadful way? How could she confess
to him that jealousy and wounded vanity had caused the change in her
demeanour? "I cannot tell you," she said at last. She had turned paler
even than usual, but her eyes burned.
"I am sorry to have given you pain," he said almost tenderly, and then
the confession broke from her in a little storm of pent-up emotion.
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