Page:Fletcher--Where Highways Cross.djvu/139

 loved her so much as at that moment, and he began to wonder why. But while he wondered, it never occurred to him that it was because of his great pity for her. He was unskilled in analysis of motive and character, despite his moody brooding over his own heart, and he had no thought within him of the foundations of his own love. It was enough for him that his heart had gone out to this particular woman.

Hepworth suddenly recalled the words which Elisabeth had spoken as she left the room. She had wished—for his sake—that she could do what he asked: he wondered if that meant that she would have married him if she had been free. He leaped at the notion as a drowning man at a passing straw. If she had been free?—might it not be that she was free? She had said that her husband might be alive or might be dead, and that if she only knew him to be dead, her mind would be at ease. And if her mind were at ease, why should she not eventually love him,