"But you will never let me be afraid of you, like the others, will
you?" he exclaimed half in earnest.
"I don't know; others are; why should not you be?"
She was still staring into vacancy, with her hands clasped, and Paul
thought he detected a little, just a little, of the same expression
he had seen in the portrait. He started, and Dorothy saw him.
"What is the matter?" she inquired, looking around at him for the
first time.
"Nothing; only you looked so dreadfully in earnest, you startled me."
"But surely you would not be startled by so simple a thing as that!"
"Why not? I am only human," he answered.
"Yes, but I am sure there was something else. Now tell me, was there
not?"
"Why, how strangely you talk!" he replied, searching her face for an
explanation. "Of course there wasn't; why should there be?"
She leaned back, apparently still in doubt as to his assertion, while
her countenance grew even more grave than before. Henley was puzzled,
and while Dorothy had not ceased to charm him, he was conscious of a
very slight uneasiness in her presence. This, however, wore off a
little later when they went together for a stroll in the forest. The
girl's extreme delicacy of appearance, her abstracted, melancholy
manner, and sincerity of expression, both attracted and perplexed
Paul, and kept him constantly at work endeavoring to solve her
character and form some conception of the mystery of her life. He had
not yet had even the courage to ask her if Ah Ben were her father,
dreading to expose himself as an impostor and be ordered from the
place, which, despite his discovery of the previous night, he could
only regard as an unmitigated hardship in the present state of his
feelings; and so he had let the hours slip by, constantly hoping that
something would occur to explain the whole situation to him. And yet
nothing had occurred, and now upon the third day he was as grossly
ignorant of the causes which had produced his strange environment as
at the moment of his arrival.
"One thing I do not understand," Paul observed, as they wandered over
the vari-colored leaves, side by side; "it is why you should be so
anxious to leave this ideal spot."
"Have I not told you that it is because I am out of my element;
because I am avoided; because I have not a friend far nor near! Oh,
Paul, you do not know what it is to be alone in the world!"