A strange thing had happened to him. The sweet familiarity of each detail in the _pet.i.te_ figure before him was impressing his mind as never before, now that he had achieved his purpose of putting it beyond the possibility of his own possession. The little hands he had held so often in the old days, conning each curve and dimple, reckoning them more his hands than were his own, and far more dearly so; the wavy hair he had kissed so fondly and delighted to touch; the deep dark eyes under their long lashes, like forest lakes seen through environing thickets, eyes that he had found his home in through so long and happy a time,-- why, they were his! Of course he had never meant to really forfeit them, to lose them, and let them go to anybody else. The idea was preposterous,--was laughable. It was indeed the first time it had occurred to him in that light. He had only thought of her as losing him; scarcely at all of himself as losing her. During the whole time he had been putting himself in her place so constantly that he had failed sufficiently to fully canva.s.s the situation from his own point of view.
Wholly absorbed in estranging her from him, he had done nothing to estrange himself from her.
It was rather with astonishment and even an appreciation of the absurd, than any serious apprehension, that he now suddenly saw how he had stultified himself, and come near doing himself a fatal injury. For knowing that her present estrangement was wholly his work, it did not occur to him but that he could undo it as easily as he had done it. A word would serve the purpose and make it all right again. Indeed, his revulsion of feeling so altered the aspect of everything that he quite forgot that any explanation at all was necessary, and, after gazing at her for a few moments while his eyes, wet with a tenderness new and deliciously sweet, roved fondly from her head to her little slipper, doating on each feature, he just put out his arms to take her with some old familiar phrase of love on his lips.
She sprang away, her eye flashing with anger.
He looked so much taken aback and discomfited that she paused in mere wonder, as she was about to rush from the room.
"Annie, what does this mean?" he stammered. "Oh, yes,--why,--my darling, don"t you know,--did n"t you guess,--it was all a joke,-- a stupid joke? I "ve just been pretending."
It was not a very lucid explanation, but she understood, though only to be plunged in greater amazement.
"But what for?" she murmured.
"I did n"t know I loved you," he said slowly, as if recalling with difficulty, and from a great distance, his motives, "and I thought it was kind to cure you of your love for me by pretending to be a fool.
I think I must have been crazy, don"t you?" and he smiled in a dazed, deprecating way.
Her face from being very pale began to flush. First a red spot started out in either cheek; then they spread till they covered the cheeks; next her forehead took a roseate hue, and down her neck the tide of color rushed, and she stood there before him a glowing statue of outraged womanhood, while in the midst her eyes sparkled with scorn.
"You wanted to cure me," she said at last, in slow, concentrated tones, "and you have succeeded. You have insulted me as no woman was ever insulted before."
She paused as if to control herself; for her voice trembled with the last words. She shivered, and her bosom heaved once or twice convulsively. Her features quivered; scorching tears of shame rushed to her eyes, and she burst out hysterically:--
"For pity"s sake never let me see you again!"
And then he found himself alone.