Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/304

 Robert moved uneasily in his chair, and said after a pause: "Do not talk to me about your work; it makes you so unlike the you I know best."

"And that is—?"

"That is the girl who danced with me at the fête, who gathered roses with me an hour after sunrise, the sister of charity who brought me soup while I was ill, and whose image has haunted my sick-room ever since she—"

Margaret interrupted him.

"It is the same—I always—" She stooped and straightened the rug upon the floor, and then took a seat a little farther away from the man whose eyes glowed with so strange a light. It made her tremble again, and the trouble in her seemed all centred in her heart, for she laid her hand upon her breast as if to stay its beating; and Robert saw the action, and knew what it meant far better than she could have told him, for love was to him not so new a thing as to this Northern maiden, in whose veins flowed the pure cool blood of the Puritans. Because it is not an easy thing for these women to let Love into their hearts, so is it impossible for them ever to drive him out; for the overthrow must be absolute and irrevocable before the sweet surrender is made. Something of this the man felt; and with the feeling came an awe of the girl whose white