“Perhaps you have discovered that you do not care so much for me as you yesterday thought you did.”

“Oh, no, no!” replied poor Mercy, in a low tone.

Again Stephen was silent for a long time.  Then he said,—­

“Ever since I can remember, I have longed for a perfect and absorbing friendship.  The peculiar relations of my life have prevented my even hoping for it.  My father’s and my mother’s friends never could be my friends.  I have lived the loneliest life a mortal man ever lived.  Until I saw you, Mercy, I had never even looked on the face of a woman whom it seemed possible to me that any man could love.  Perhaps, when I tell you that, you can imagine what it was to me to look on the face of a woman whom it seems to me no man could help loving.  I suppose many men have loved you, Mercy, and many more men will.  I do not think any man has ever felt for you, or ever will feel for you, as I feel.  My love for you includes every love the heart can know,—­the love of father, brother, friend, lover.  Young as I am, you seem to me like my child, to be taken care of; and you seem like my sister, to be trusted and loved; and like my friend, to be leaned upon.  You see what my life is.  You see the burden which I must carry, and which none can share.  Do you think that the friendship I can give you can be worth what it would ask?  I feel withheld and ashamed as I speak to you.  I know how little I can do, how little I can offer.  To fetter you by a word would be base and selfish; but, oh, Mercy, till life brings you something better than my love, let me love you, if it is only till to-morrow!”

Mercy listened to each syllable Stephen spoke, as one in a wilderness, flying for his life from pursuers, would listen to every sound which could give the faintest indications which way safety might lie.  If she had listened dispassionately to such words, spoken to any other woman, her native honesty of soul would have repelled them as unfair.  But every instinct of her nature except the one tender instinct of loving was disarmed and blinded,—­disarmed by her affection for Stephen, and blinded by her profound sympathy for his suffering.

She fixed her eyes on him as intently as if she would read the very thoughts of his heart.

“Do you understand me, Mercy?” he said.

“I think I do,” she replied in a whisper.

“If you do not now, you will as time goes on,” he continued.  “I have not a thought I am unwilling for you to know; but there are thoughts which it would be wrong for me to put into words.  I stand where I stand; and no mortal can help me, except you.  You can help me infinitely.  Already the joy of seeing you, hearing you, knowing that you are near, makes all my life seem changed.  It is not very much for you to give me, Mercy, after all, out of the illimitable riches of your beauty, your brightness, your spirit, your strength,—­just a few words, just a few smiles, just a little love,—­for the few days, or it may be years, that fate sets us by each other’s side?  And you, too, need a friend, Mercy.  Your duty to another has brought you where you are singularly alone, for the time being, just as my duty to another has placed me where I must be singularly alone.  Is it not a strange chance which has thus brought us together?”