I wish I had
raised my arm that morning."
"What would have been the good of it?" she sighed out.
"What good? No good, of course. We had no forebodings. This seemed to be
an inexpugnable refuge, where we could live untroubled and learn to know
each other."
"It's perhaps in trouble that people get to know each other," she
suggested.
"Perhaps," he said indifferently. "At any rate, we would not have gone
away from here with him; though I believe he would have come in eagerly
enough, and ready for any service he could render. It's that fat man's
nature--a delightful fellow. You would not come on the wharf that time
I sent the shawl back to Mrs. Schomberg through him. He has never seen
you."
"I didn't know that you wanted anybody ever to see me," she said.
He had folded his arms on his breast and hung his head.
"And I did not know that you cared to be seen as yet. A misunderstanding
evidently. An honourable misunderstanding. But it does not matter now."
He raised his head after a silence.
"How gloomy this forest has grown! Yet surely the sun cannot have set
already."
She looked round; and as if her eyes had just been opened, she perceived
the shades of the forest surrounding her, not so much with gloom, but
with a sullen, dumb, menacing hostility. Her heart sank in the engulfing
stillness, at that moment she felt the nearness of death, breathing on
her and on the man with her.
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