"I am not angry with one word you have said to-night; you have only
expressed what my own cowardly conscience ought to have uttered;
nevertheless, to-morrow sees our last meeting. All your account against
me is fairly balanced now. I do not know what I may have to suffer, but
I do know that I _will_ be alone till I die. Perhaps some day I may
thank you in my thoughts for what you have done; I can not--now."
With a heavy heart Waring owned to himself that her words were bitterly
true. In curing such diseases, the physician must work without hope of
reward or fee; it will be long before the patient can touch without a
shudder the hand that inflicted the saving cautery.
Her tone changed, and she went on murmuring, low and plaintively, as if
in soliloquy and unconscious of another's presence.
"I could not help loving him, though I knew it was sin; if there is
shame in confessing it, I can not feel it yet. I wish I had told
him--_once_--how dearly I loved him; I shall never be able to whisper it
to him now, and I dare not write it. No, he will not forget me as he has
forgotten others; but he will hate me, and call me false, and fickle,
and cold.
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