Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/435

Rh “Waldo!” I exclaimed, glad to see him, and extended to him my hand. He pressed it, and I felt that his was burning as with fever.

“I have been looking for you,” he said softly—“I wished to bid you—farewell!”

“Farewell? How? Why?”

“I am leaving this very night,” he resumed, speaking low and hastily, as if with suppressed emotion—“leaving for Sicily, and thence to Greece or Alexandria—I do not know which—with the first vessel! I cannot, I ought not to remain longer, either for her sake or for my own. I now know it, I have seen it, I understand it;—she does not love me; she cannot love me; she has wished, she has endeavored to do so, but she cannot; and I neither will nor can compel her to become my wife without love. No, I will not force this child to love me; I will not abuse either the goodness or the weakness of her heart. My love for her and my own self-respect forbid me to do so. I should despise myself, if—— Tell her that I shall always love her, but that she is free. But do not tell her so till I am gone, till there is no longer the fear of her own heart's tenderness deceiving herself and—me, and inducing her again to promise what she cannot perform. But you, her motherly friend, do you watch over her, prevent her from being deceived by that selfish woman, her aunt, or by that butterfly-prince who flutters from flower to flower! May she live for her innocent fancies, for her Kindergartens, and her twelve female friends, if she do not meet with a husband who will make her as happy—as I would have done. But she must, for this reason, be