Why did the modesty which was a part of him, and the high-bred
reserve which shrank from letting his own mother know of the good deeds
his life wrought, hold him silent now?
In that silence something fell between them. What was it? But a moment,
yet in that little space it seemed to him as though continents divided
them, and seas rolled between. "Francesca!" he cried, under his
breath,--he had never before called her by her Christian
name,--"Francesca!" and stretched out his hand towards her, as a
drowning man stretches forth his hand to life.
"This room is stifling!" she said for answer; and her voice, dulled and
unnatural, seemed to his strangely confused senses as though it came
from a far distance,--"I am suffering: shall we go out to the air?"
CHAPTER VI
"_But more than loss about me clings._"
Jean Ingelow
"No! no, I am mad to think it! I must have been dreaming! what could
there have been in that talk to have such an effect as I have conjured
up? She pitied Franklin! yes, she pities every one whom she thinks
suffering or wronged. Dear little tender heart! of course it was the
room,--didn't she say she was ill? it must have been awful; the heat and
the closeness got into my head,--that's it. Bad air is as bad as whiskey
on a man's brain. What a fool I made of myself! not even answering her
questions. What did she think of me? Well.
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