"Speak out all your thought to me, whatever it is," he says, in a tone of grave entreaty, moved and tender, yet manly withal. "Look at me with the same friendly, fearless eyes that you did last week! I know, my dear, that you always think of others more than yourself, and I dare say that _now_ you are afraid of hurting me! Indeed, you need not be! I am tough and well-seasoned; I have known what pain is before now--it would be very odd, at my time of life, if I had not! I can well bear a little more, and be the better for it, perhaps." I stand stupidly silent. One's outer man or woman often does an injustice to one's inner feelings. As he speaks, my heart goes out to him, but I can find no words in which to dress my thought. "Nancy!" in a tone of thorough distress. "I can bear any thing but seeing you shrink and shiver away from me, as I have seen you do from your father." "You _never_ will see that," reply I, laconically, gathering bravery enough to look him in the face, as I deliver this encouraging remark. "Do you think," he says, beginning to walk restlessly about the room--(long ago he dropped my limp hand)--"that all this week I have had much hope? Every time that I have caught a glimpse of myself in the glass, I have said, 'Is this a face likely to take a child's fancy? Do you bear much resemblance to the hero of her storybooks?' My dear"--(stopping before me)--"you cannot think my presumption more absurd than I do myself." "I do not think it at all absurd," reply I, beginning to speak quite stoutly, and to be rather diffuse than otherwise. "Perhaps I did, just at first, when they were all laughing, and saying about your having been at school with father; but _now_ I do not in the least--I do not care what the boys say--I do not, really. I am not joking." At my words he half stretches out his hand to take mine; but, as if repressing some strong impulse, withdraws it again, and speaks quietly, with a rather sober smile. "I am afraid that one's soul ages more slowly than one's body, Nancy! Even at my age it has seemed difficult to me to be brought into hourly companionship with all that was most fresh and womanly, and spirited, and pretty." "_Pretty!_" think I. "I wish the boys could hear him! they will never believe me if I tell them." "And not wish to have it for my own, to take and make much of. I that have never had any thing very lovely or lovable in my life. And then, dear, it was all your good-nature, you did not know what you were doing; you seemed to find some little pleasure in my society--even chose it by preference now and then. My talk did not weary you, as I should have thought it would have done, and so I grew to think--to think--Bah!" (with a movement of impatience) "it was a foolish thought! what can there be in common between me and a child like you?"