I remember looking hard at Gabriel once, and saying to
myself, "After all, he will admire me for this much more than I
deserve; after all, I do not love him so much as I imagined."
After supper I played some while on the piano. Gabriel and Constance
sat very far apart, but I should not have felt it had they sat
together. At ten o'clock I left off.
"Gabriel," said I, "I shall turn you out a little earlier than usual
to-night, because I want to walk as far as the park with you."
Then, for a second, feeling returned to me; there came a little
flutter of fear within me, the same I sometimes felt in childhood
when I had told a lie and, wanting to confess it, stood at my
mother's door saying, "May I come in?"
There was no moon, but the sky was not dark. We walked through the
garden in silence; once or twice I contrived to force up to my lips,
by great effort, the words I meant to speak; but then my heart beat
so fearfully that I felt my courage fail me, and I said to myself,
time after time, "Presently will do." It was not active love for
Gabriel that checked me, merely the actual physical fear that I
suppose most people experience when about to give forth words of
great import.
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