He recoiled at sight of her, then stood for one moment speechless before her motionless figure. "Kitty!" he called, softly, in the anxious, hesitating tone of one who seeks to arouse another from some heavy, troubled dream.
She drew herself up to her full height, and slowly descended the steps. "What do you wish, Doctor Bruck?" she asked, over her shoulder, when she stood upon the grass below. She might have been some automaton, but for the indignant light that flamed in her eyes.
He blushed like a girl, and approached her. "You heard—" he asked, with hesitation, but with intense eagerness.
"Yes," she interrupted him, with a bitter smile, "every word. Another reason why you should rid your house of intrusive strangers,—the walls have ears." She moved away from the steps, as if to be quite clear of the threshold she was no more to cross.
Meanwhile he had recovered himself; he threw his hat upon a garden-table near, and stood erect before her, no longer blushing, but with an air of relief, as if matters had taken a wished-for turn, and chance had come to aid him. "Fear of being overheard has no part in what I have been telling my aunt. This quiet home has no secrets, and those which one must imprison in his own breast will not escape, even where the walls have no ears," he said, with calm gravity. "You heard every word,—you know, then, that only the desire for present rest induces me to ask for undisturbed quiet. Unfortunately, I must resign any attempt to justify my rude egotism. You certainly cannot conceive that there are those who are perpetually fleeing from thoughts and—images; but perhaps you may more easily imagine the angry pain, the torture of a man so fleeing, who, hurrying exhausted to his home, finds there just what he seeks to escape."
As he spoke, he had approached her more nearly, and she now looked him keenly and inquiringly in the face. Yes, he was in earnest; he not only described this torture, he felt it at this very moment; his strangely disordered glance, the pallor that overspread his countenance, left her no room to doubt it; but—he did not flee from his future wife, or from the innocent children; and none others frequented his room, except herself. It was really true, then, as she had frequently told herself, that she had become utterly distasteful to him since she had several times been the witness of scenes between himself and Flora; he did not wish to see her in his house, and he had begged his aunt to put a stop to her afternoon classes, that her further intercourse there might cease. As this conviction crept over her, her lovely features lost their usual mobility, and their expression grew stern and hard.