to miss me. Mr. Langenau talked constantly to Miss Lowder, with whom he
had been dancing, and never looked once toward where I had been sitting.
A long time after, when they had been dancing--hours it seemed to
me--Miss Lowder seemed to feel faint or tired, and Mr. Langenau came out
with her, and took her up-stairs to the dressing-room.
Ashamed to be seen looking in at the window, I ran into the library and
sat down. There was a student's lamp upon the table, but the room had no
other light. I sat leaning back in a large chair by the table, with my
bouquet in my lap, buttoning and unbuttoning absently my long white
gloves. In a moment I heard Mr. Langenau come down-stairs alone: he had
left Miss Lowder in the dressing-room to rest there: he came directly
toward the library.
He came half-way in the door, then paused. "May I speak to you?" he said
slowly, fixing his eyes on mine. "I seem to be the only one who is
forbidden, of those who have offended you and of those who have not."
"No one has said what you have," I said very faintly.
In an instant he was standing beside me, with one hand resting on the
table.
"Will you listen to me," he said, bending a little toward me and
speaking in a quick, low voice, "I did say what you have a right to
resent; but I said it in a moment when I was not master of my words. I
had just heard something that made me doubt my senses: and my only
thought was how to save myself, and not to show how I was staggered by
it. I am a proud man, and it is hard to tell you this--but I cannot bear
this coldness from you--and _I ask you to forgive me_"
His eyes, his voice, had all their unconquerable influence upon me. I
bent over Richard's poor flowers, and pulled them to pieces while I
tried to speak. There was a silence, during which he must have heard the
loud beating of my heart, I think: at last he spoke again in a lower
voice, "Will you not be kind, and say that we are friends once more?"
I said something that was inaudible to him, and he stooped a little
nearer me to catch it. I made a great effort and commanded my voice and
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