Will you put your hand in
mine?"
She stretched hers eagerly and gratefully towards him. What had
happened? Through all the numbness of her blood, there sprang a
strange new warmth from his strong palm, and a pulse, which she had
almost forgotten as a dream of the past, began to beat through her
frame. She turned around all a-tremble, and saw his face in the
glow of the coming day.
"Leonard Clare!" she cried.
"Then you have not forgotten me?"
"Could one forget, when the other remembers?"
The words came involuntarily from her lips. She felt what they
implied, the moment afterwards, and said no more. But he kept her
hand in his.
"Mrs. Lawrie," he began, after another silence, "we are hanging by
a hair on the edge of life, but I shall gladly let that hair break,
since I may tell you now, purely and in the hearing of God, how I
have tried to rise to you out of the low place in which you found
me. At first you seemed too far; but you yourself led me the first
step of the way, and I have steadily kept my eyes on you, and
followed it.
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