"Sick?" he said in a hollow voice. "My soul is sick--dying. My God! My God!" An impressive pause. "Ah, child, you do not know what suffering is--you who have lived only in these simple, humble surroundings." Hilda was trembling with apprehension. "What is it, Carl? You can tell me. Let me help you bear it." "No! no! I must bear it alone. I must take my dark shadow from your young life. I ought not to have come. I should have fled. But love makes me a coward." "But I love you, Carl," she said gently. "And I have missed you--dreadfully, dreadfully!" He rolled his eyes wildly. "You torture me!" he exclaimed, seizing her hand in a dead man's clutch. "How CAN I speak?" Hilda's heart seemed to stand still. She was pale to the lips, and he could see, even in the darkness, her eyes grow and startle. "What is it?" she murmured. "You know I--can bear anything for you." "Not that tone," he groaned. "Reproach me! Revile me! Be harsh, scornful--but not those tender accents." He felt her hand become cold and he saw terror in her eyes. "Forgive me," she said humbly. "I don't know what to say or do. I--you look so strange. It makes me feel all queer inside. Won't you tell me, please?" He noted with artistic satisfaction that the band was playing passionate love-music with sobs and sad ecstasies of farewell embraces in it. He kissed her, then drew back. "No," he groaned. "Those lips are not for me, accursed that I am." She was no longer looking at him, but sat gazing straight ahead, her shoulders bent as if she were crouching to receive a blow. He began in a low voice, and, as he spoke, it rose or fell as his words and the distant music prompted him. "Mine has been a luckless life," he said. "I have been a football of destiny, kicked and flung about, hither and yon. Again and again I have thought in my despair to lay me down and die. But something has urged me on, on, on. And at last I met you." He paused and groaned--partly because it was the proper place, partly with vexation. Here was a speech to thrill, yet she sat there inert, her face a stupid blank. He was not even sure that she had heard. "Are you listening?" he asked in a stern aside, a curious mingling of the actor and the stage manager. "I--I don't know," she answered, startling. "I feel so--so--queer. I don't seem to be able to pay attention." She looked at him timidly and her chin quivered. "Don't you love me any more?" "Love you? Would that I did not! But I must on--my time is short. How can you say I do not love you when my soul is like a raging fire?" She shook her head slowly. "Your voice don't feel like it," she said. "What is it? What are you going to say?"