"Don't you see it
is because I can't bear to let you go? I hoped to get away without saying
it. I want to be alone. I want to be with myself and try to realize. I
didn't want to make a babbling idiot of myself--but I am! It is because I
don't want another second of your sweetness to leave an added pain when
you've gone. It is because I don't want to hear your voice again, to have
it haunt me in the loneliness you will leave--but it's useless, useless! I
shall hear it always, just as I shall always see your face, just as I have
heard your voice and seen your face these seven years--ever since I first
saw you, a child at Winter Harbor. I forgot for a while; I thought it was
a girl I had made up out of my own heart, but it was you--you always! The
impression I thought nothing of at the time, just the merest touch on my
heart, light as it was, grew and grew deeper until it was there forever.
You've known me twenty-four hours, and I understand what you think of me
for speaking to you like this. If I had known you for years and had waited
and had the right to speak and keep your respect, what have I to offer
you? I, couldn't even take care of you if you went mad as I and listened.
I've no excuse for this raving. Yes, I have!"
He saw her in another second of lightning, a sudden, bright one. Her back
was turned to him; she had taken a few startled steps from him.
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