ing about you." She
raised a corner of her shawl to her eyes.

He saw her shoulders rise with a sob, then he caught her hands.
"Don't--don't cry, little girl. I'd give my life to help you. Oh yes,
_do_ let me hold your hands, just this once; it won't make any
difference."

She did not attempt to withdraw her hands from his passionate, reckless
clasp, and, now more trustingly, raised her eyes to his.

"Sometimes I think you really love me," she faltered. "You have made
me think so several times."

"I'm not ashamed of it," he said. "I've had fancies for women, but I
have never felt this way before. It seems to me if I was to live a
thousand years I'd never, never feel that you was like other women.
Maybe you love me real deep, and maybe you just fancy me, but I'll
never want any other human being like I want you. I have been a bad
man--a careless, thoughtless man. Ever since I was a boy I have played
with love. I was playing with fire--the fire of hell, Harriet--and I
got burnt. In consequence of what I've done I suffer as no mortal ever
suffered. Repentance brings contentment to some men, but they are not
built like me. I don't do anything from morning to night but brood and
brood over my past life."

"I thought you had had some trouble," she returned, sympathetically.

"Why did you think so?" he asked.

"You talked when you were out of your head. That's why I first took
pity on you. I never saw a man suffer in mind as you did. You rolled
and tumbled the first two or three nights and begged for forgiveness;
often you spoke so loud I was afraid others in the house would hear."

He opened his palms before her. "These hands are soaked in human
blood--innocent human blood," he said, tragically. "I don't deny it;
if it would do a particle of good I'd tell every soul on earth. I won
a good girl's love, and when I got tired of her and left her she killed
herself to escape the misery I put her in. I was unworthy of her, but
she didn't know it, or want to know it. Nobody knows she took her own
life except me and her mother, and it has ruined her life--taken away
her only comfort in old age and made her my mortal enemy. She never
gives me a minute's rest--she reminds me constantly that I'll never get
forgiveness and never be happily married, and she is right--I never
shall. My wicked nature demands too much of a woman. I can love, and
do love, with all my soul, but my pride cannot be subdued. I--"