29/30 At every word, what little hope I had once had of her love faded like the stars above our heads. Yet, instead of it came the promise of an almost sisterly friendship, which at the time seemed poor enough exchange, but which was yet a prize worth any man's having. She bade me tell her about myself, and heard me so gently, and concerned herself so honestly in all that touched me, and praised and chid me so prettily for what I had done well and ill, that I would my story had been twice as long and twice as pitiful. The only secret I did not tell her, you may guess. |