"
Again Unorna laughed, so strangely that the sound of her own voice
startled her.
"Why do you laugh like that?" he asked.
"Because what you say is so unjust to yourself," she answered, nervously
and scarcely seeing him where he sat. "You seem to think it is all on
your side. And yet, I just told you that I was fond of you."
"I think it is a fondness greater than friendship that we feel for each
other," he said, presently, thrusting the probe of a new hope into the
tortured wound.
"Yes?" she spoke faintly, with averted face.
"Something more--a stronger tie, a closer bond. Unorna, do you believe
in the migration of the soul throughout ages, from one body to another?"
"Sometimes," she succeeded in saying.
"I do not believe in it," he continued. "But I see well enough how men
may, since I have known you. We have grown so intimate in these few
weeks, we seem to understand each other so wholly, with so little
effort, we spend such happy, peaceful hours together every day, that
I can almost fancy our two selves having been together through a whole
lifetime in some former state, living together, thinking together,
inseparable from birth, and full of an instinctive, mutual
understanding. I do not know whether that seems an exaggeration to you
or not. Has the same idea ever crossed your mind?"
She said something, or tried to say something, but the words were
inaudible; he interpreted them as expressive of assent, and went on, in
a musing tone, as though talking quite as much to himself as to her.
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