[Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain]@TWC D-Link bookSketches New and Old CHAPTER III 4/5
Poor Conrad was becoming a very ghost through dread and dire distress.
One day as he was emerging from a private anteroom attached to the picture-gallery, Constance confronted him, and seizing both his hands, in hers, exclaimed: "Oh, why do you avoid me? What have I done--what have I said, to lose your kind opinion of me--for surely I had it once? Conrad, do not despise me, but pity a tortured heart? I cannot, cannot hold the words unspoken longer, lest they kill me--I LOVE you, CONRAD! There, despise me if you must, but they would be uttered!" Conrad was speechless.
Constance hesitated a moment, and then, misinterpreting his silence, a wild gladness flamed in her eyes, and she flung her arms about his neck and said: "You relent! you relent! You can love me--you will love me! Oh, say you will, my own, my worshipped Conrad!'" Conrad groaned aloud.
A sickly pallor overspread his countenance, and he trembled like an aspen.
Presently, in desperation, he thrust the poor girl from him, and cried: "You know not what you ask! It is forever and ever impossible!" And then he fled like a criminal, and left the princess stupefied with amazement. A minute afterward she was crying and sobbing there, and Conrad was crying and sobbing in his chamber.
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