What was this?
Why was she rejected? Had she ceased to please? She stood here
offering her wares, and he would none of them! And yet they were all
his! His to take and keep, not his to refuse though! In her quick
petulant nature, a moment ago on fire with hope, thwarted love and
wounded vanity wrought. The schoolmaster that there is in all men, to
the despair of all girls and most women, was now completely in
possession of Archie. He had passed a night of sermons, a day of
reflection; he had come wound up to do his duty; and the set mouth,
which in him only betrayed the effort of his will, to her seemed the
expression of an averted heart. It was the same with his constrained
voice and embarrassed utterance; and if so - if it was all over - the
pang of the thought took away from her the power of thinking.
He stood before her some way off. "Kirstie, there's been too much of
this. We've seen too much of each other." She looked up quickly and
her eyes contracted. "There's no good ever comes of these secret
meetings.
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