His chair was beside hers now and he was seizing her hand. “Rhoda! Not think about you! How can I help it? Don’t you know I’m always thinking about you and always hoping that some day you’ll think better about what I’ve been hoping for so long? Isn’t there any chance, any prospect of a chance, for me yet?” She laid her free hand upon his two that were clasping hers. “I’m sorry, Horace! You know how much I like you, how much I prize your friendship--but you are like a dear brother to me, Horace, and I can’t think of you any other way!” “But isn’t it possible that sometime--don’t you think, Rhoda, that after a while you’ll learn to like me the other way too? You know what I am, you know how much I love you--won’t my heart’s love draw yours, after a while?” She shook her head and drew her hands away. “No, Horace, there isn’t any hope, not the least in the world. And I wish, dear Horace, I wish you would put it quite out of your mind. Don’t waste any more time thinking about me. There is many a nice girl who would make you a good wife, and I do wish, Horace, for your own sake, you would fall in love with one and marry her.” He looked at her searchingly. “When a girl talks that way she really means it.” “You know I mean it, Horace.” “I mean, Rhoda, that she knows her own heart, clear through, and feels sure about it.” “That’s the way I know mine,” she answered softly. He seized her hand again as he exclaimed, “Does that mean, Rhoda, that there is some one else and that your heart is full already?” “Yes, Horace. It means that I love some one else so deeply that I can never have a love thought for any other man. I love him with all my heart, although I don’t suppose I shall ever marry him. But I shall never marry any one else, and I could no more think of you or any one else with the kind of love you want than I could if I were his wife.” There was something like reverence in the gesture with which he put down her hand. “Then that is the end of it for me, Rhoda. Would you mind telling me, is it that”--he paused an instant, supplying mentally the adjective with which he usually thought of Rhoda’s lover--“slaveholder, Delavan, from Kentucky?” “Yes, Horace.” He rose and took up his hat. “If that’s the way it is with you,” he began, then stopped, looking fixedly. “Poor girl!” he went on, resting his hand lightly for an instant upon her head. “You ought to have had a happier fate!” “It’s as good as I deserve, Horace,” she replied cheerfully. Then her face lighted with the glow that had been in her heart since Delavan’s visit, and she went on: “And it might have been so much worse!”