"You must hear me, Helen," said he, in that sweet, low voice, peculiar to himself. "Had it not been for you I should never have returned. I told you once that I loved you, but if I loved you then I must adore you now. You are ten thousand times more lovely. Helen, you do not know how charming, how beautiful you are. You do not know the enthusiastic devotion, the deathless passion you have inspired." "I cannot conceive of such depths of falsehood," exclaimed Helen, her timid eyes kindling with indignation; "all this have you said to Mittie, and far more, and she, mistaken girl, believes you true." "I deceived myself, alas!" cried he, in a tone of bitter sorrow. "I thought I loved her, for I had not yet seen and known her gentler, lovelier sister. Forgive me, Helen--love is not the growth of our will. 'Tis a flower that springs spontaneously in the human heart, of celestial fragrance, and destined to immortal bloom." "If I thought you really loved me," said Helen, in a softened tone, shrinking from the fascination of his glance, and the sorcery of his voice, "I should feel great and exceeding sorrow--for it would be in vain. But the love that I have imagined is of a very different nature. Slowly kindled, it burns with steady and unceasing glory, unchanging as the sun, and eternal as the soul." Helen paused with a burning flush, fearful that she had revealed the one secret of her heart so lately revealed to herself, and Clinton resumed his passionate declarations. "If you will not go," said she, all her terror returning at the vehemence of his suit, "if you will not go," looking wildly at the door that separated her from the sick room, "I will leave you here. You dare not follow me. The destroying angel guards this threshold." In her excitement she knew not what she uttered. The words came unbidden from her lips. She laid her hand on the latch, but Clinton caught hold of it ere she had time to lift it. "You shall not leave me, by heaven, you shall not, till you have answered one question. Is it for the cold, calculating Arthur Hazleton you reject such love as mine?" Instead of uttering an indignant denial to this sudden and vehement interrogation, Helen trembled and turned pale. Her natural timidity and sensitiveness returned with overpowering influence; and added to these, a keen sense of shame at being accused of an unsolicited attachment, a charge she could not with truth repel, humbled and oppressed her. "A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon Than love that would seem hid."