An Avowal of Love

"I believe all you tell me."

The man's grasp on the casing of the window tightened, his eyes upon
the mass of black hair.

"Strangely enough," he continued, "this whole affair has gone wrong
from the start; nothing has turned out in the natural way. Criminals
have been made into officers of the law, and honest men changed into
outlaws. Now it seems impossible to conjecture how the adventure will
terminate."

She sat looking up at him, scarcely seeing his face, her hands clasped
in her lap.

"'All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players,'"
she said, quoting the familiar words as if in a dream. "We are such
puppets in the great play! How strange it all is! How dangerously
close real life is, always skirting the precipice of tragedy! Plans
fail, lines tangle, and lives are changed forever by events seemingly
insignificant. To-morrow is always mystery. I wonder, is it not a dim
consciousness of this that renders the stage so attractive to the
multitude? Even its burlesques, its lurid melodramas, are never
utterly beyond the possible. Everywhere are found stranger stories
than any romancer can invent; and yet we sometimes term our lives
commonplace." She leaned back against the wall, a sob coming into her
voice. "What--what is going to be the end of this--for me?"

"Whatever you will," he exclaimed passionately, forgetful of all but
her power over him. "It is you who must choose."

"Yes, it is I who must choose," her face still uplifted. "Because I am
not a leaf to float on the air, my destiny decided by a breath of wind,
I must choose; yet how can I know I decide rightly? When heart and
conscience stand opposed, any decision means sacrifice and pain. I
meant those hasty words wrung out of me in shame, and spoken yonder; I
meant them then, and yet they haunt me like so many sheeted ghosts.
'Tis not their untruth, but the thought will not down that the real
cause of their utterance was not the wrong done me. It had other
birth."