Chester St. John, waiting rather impatiently for the appearance of Iris
in the parlor, came forward with warm words of greeting to meet the
little white-robed figure, when the girl at last made her appearance,
failing, in the semidarkness of the room, to notice the unusual pallor
of her face, or the strange constraint of her manner.
“Iris!”
He could only speak the two soft, sweet syllables of her name, thinking
how well it suited her--Iris--like a rainbow, always bright.
He tried to take her hands in his own, for--although he had as yet
made no actual declaration of his love, he knew he had shown her in
many ways how dear she was to him, and if he was not mistaken in the
language of her sweet, beautiful eyes, he felt equally confident that
his love was returned.
It was not until her hand lay in his own, and he felt it cold as ice in
his clasp, that he took the alarm.
“Iris, my beloved! You know why I have come to you this morning; your
father has told you----” he began, and then--drawing her closely in
his arms he looked intently in her face, uttering a low cry of alarm
at sight of the white, changed countenance. “Iris! Oh, my love, what
is it? What pain or sorrow has come to you?” he exclaimed, bending his
lips to hers, while for one moment she lay white and passive in his
embrace. “Speak to me, my little one! My wife!” he ejaculated. But
at the sound of those words, “My wife!” Iris drew herself out of his
embrace, shivering from head to foot, and covering her ears to shut out
the sound of the voice whose every accent was sweeter than any earthly
music to her.
“You must not talk to me so. You have no right to address me in such
terms,” she said in a voice that sounded cold and feelingless from
the very effort she was making to control her emotion. “I cannot be
your wife, Mr. St. John. I--I do not love you. You have been mistaken;
please do not distress me by repeating your offer.”
It was such a cold and careless rejection that Chester St. John could
not at first believe the evidence of his own ears.
What transpired during the next few minutes Iris could never clearly
recall. She had a vague memory of hearing a voice that bore no
resemblance to the clear tones of Chester St. John, upbraiding her
in bitter, heartbreaking terms for making his life desolate, and
destroying his faith in his mother’s sex.
She seemed to feel for days and weeks afterward the close, almost
cruel, pressure of his hand as he held her fingers for one moment in
parting; after which it had seemed to her that the earth grew suddenly
dark and cold as the grave, and for the second time, since listening to
Oscar Hilton’s story in the library, she had fallen like one dead.