To the end of her life Helen will see the look on Emanuel Bayard’s
face when she had spoken these words.
With more of terror than delight, the woman’s nature sprang, for
that instant, back upon itself. Would she have recalled what she
had said? It is possible; for now she understood how he loved her,
and perceived that she had never understood what a man’s love is.
Yet, when he spoke, it was with that absence of drama, with that
repression amounting almost to commonplace, which characterize the
intensest crises of experience.
“_Do_ you?” he said. “_Have_ you?”
And at first that was all. But his voice shook, and his hand; and
his face went so white that he seemed like a man smitten rather by
death than by love.
Helen, in a pang of maiden fright, had moved away from him, and
retreated to the sofa; he sank beside her silently. Leaning forward
a little, he covered his eyes with one hand. The other rested
on the cushion within an inch of her purple dress; he did not
touch her; he did not touch it. Helen felt sorry, seeing him so
troubled and wrung; her heart went out in a throb of that maternal
compassion which is never absent from the love of any woman for
any man.
“Oh,” she sighed, “I meant to make you happy, to give you comfort!
And now I have made you unhappy!”
“You have made me the happiest of all miserable men!”
He raised his head, and looked at her till hers was the face to
fall.
“Oh, don’t!” she pleaded. “Not like _that_!”
But he paid no heed to this entreaty. The soul of the saint and
the heart of the man made duel together; and the man won, and
exulted in it, and wondered how he dared; but his gaze devoured
her willfully. The first embrace of the eyes--more delicate, more
deferent, and at once less guarded than the meeting of hands or
clasp of arms--he gave her, and did not restrain it. Before it,
Helen felt more helpless than if he had touched her. She seemed to
herself to be annihilated in his love.
“Happy?” he said exultingly, “you deify me! You have made a god of
me!”
“No,” she shook her head with a little teasing smile, “I have made
a man of you.”
“Then they are one thing and the same!” cried the lover. “Let me
hear you say it. Tell it to me again!”
She was silent, and she crimsoned to the brows.
“You are not sure!” he accused her. “You want to take it back. It
was a madness, an impulse. You don’t mean it. You do not, you have
not loved me.... How _could_ you?” he added humbly. “You know I
never counted on it, never expected, did not trust myself to think
of it--all this while.”
She lifted her head proudly.
“I have nothing to take back. It was not an impulse. I am not that
kind of woman. I have been meaning to tell you--when you gave me
the chance. I love you. I have loved you ever since--”
She stopped.
“Since when? How long have you loved me? Come! Speak! I _will_
know!” commanded Bayard deliriously.
“Oh, what is going to be gained if I tell you?” Helen gave
him a prisoner’s look. She turned her head from side to side
rebelliously, as if she had flown into a cage whose door was now
unexpectedly shut.
“I meant to make you happy. All I say seems to make everything
worse. I shall tell you nothing more.”
“You will tell me,” he said in a tone of calm authority, “all I
ask. It is my affair whether I am happy or wretched. Yours is to
obey my wish: because you love me, Helen.”
His imperious voice fell to a depth of tenderness in which her soul
and body seemed to sink and drown.
“I have loved you,” she whispered, “ever since that night,--the
first time I saw you here, in my father’s house.”
“Now, sir!” she added, with her sudden, pretty willfulness, “make
the most of it. I’m not ashamed of it, either. But I shall be
ashamed of _you_ if--this--if after I’ve said it _all_, it doesn’t
make you happy.... That’s all I care for,” she said quietly. “It is
all I care for in this world.”
“Oh, what shall we do?” pleaded Bayard.
“You have your work,” said Helen dreamily, “and I your love.”
Her voice sank to a whisper.
“Is that enough for you?” demanded the man. “I shall perish of it,
I shall perish!”
Something in his tone and expression caused Helen to regard him
keenly. He looked so wasted, so haggard, that her heart stood
still, and said to her,--“This is truer than he knows.”
“No,” she answered with a sweet, womanly composure, “it is not
enough for me.”
“And yet,” he said with the brutality of the tormented, “I cannot,
I must not, ask you to be my”--
She put the tips of her fingers to his lips to check the word. He
seized her hand and held it there; then, for he came to himself, he
relinquished it, and laid it down.
“Dear,” said Helen, “I shouldn’t mind it ... to be poor. I want you
to understand--to know how it is. I have never felt ... any other
way. It shall be just as you say,” she added with a gentleness
which gave a beautiful dignity to her words. “We need not ... do
it, because I say this. But I wanted you to know--that I was not
_afraid_ of a hard life with you.”
“Oh, you cannot understand,” he groaned. “It is no picturesque
poverty you would have to meet. It would mean cold, hunger, misery
you’ve never thought of, cruel suffering--for you. It would mean
all that a man has no right to ask a woman to endure for him,
_because_ he loves her ... as I love you.”
“I could starve,” said Helen.
“God help us!” cried the man. Nothing else came to his dry lips.
Then Helen answered him in these strong and quiet words: “I told
you I would trust you, and I shall do it to the end. When you are
ready for me, I shall come. I am not afraid--of anything, except
that you should suffer and that I could not comfort you. If you
never see the way to think it right ... I can wait. I love you; and
I am yours to take or leave.”
“This,” whispered Bayard reverently, for he could have knelt before
her, “is a woman’s love! I am unworthy of it--and of you.”
“Oh, there is the other kind of woman,” said Helen, trying rather
unsuccessfully to smile. “This is only _my_ way of loving. I am not
ashamed of it.”
“Ashamed of it? It honors you! It glorifies you!”
He held out his arms; but she did not swerve towards them; they
dropped. She seemed to him encompassed in a shining cloud, in which
her own celestial tenderness and candor had wrapped and protected
her.
“Love me!” he pleaded. “Love me, trust me, till we can think. I
must do right by _you_, whatever it means to _me_.”
“We love each other,” repeated Helen, holding out her hands, “and I
trust you. Let us live on that a little while, till we--till you”--
But she faltered, and her courage forsook her when she looked up
into his face. All the anguish of the man that the woman cannot
share, and may not understand, started out in visible lines and
signs upon his features; all the solemn responsibility for her, for
himself, and for the unknown consequences of their sacred passion;
the solitary burden, which it is his to wear in the name of love,
and which presses hardest upon him whose spirit is higher and
stronger than mere human joy.
But at this moment a sound was heard upon the stone steps of the
Queen Anne house. It was the footfall of the Professor himself,
returning from his closing lecture of the series on Eschatology.
Mrs. Carruth pattered behind him with short, stout steps. She
had wound the affairs of the Association for Assisting Indigent
Married Students with Blankets, to a condition in which they could
run along without her till the exegetical trip to the German
Professor’s in Berlin should be over, and the slush of Cesarea
should know her again.