"Why?" the girl asked, suddenly turning her innocent eyes upon him in some surprise. "Why should he care?"
The Rector's face glowed.
"Because he—he must care." The answer was ridiculously inadequate, he knew, but he had nothing else to say. "How can he help caring when he sees that you care?—unless he has no more feeling than a log or a block of stone." He smote his hand angrily against the trunk of a tree beside him as he spoke.
Still Enid looked at him with the same expression of amazement. But little by little his emotion seemed to affect her too—the blush to pass from his face to her pale cheeks.
"But—but," she stammered, at length, "you are wrong—in that way—in the way you think. I do not care."
"You do not care? For him do you not care?"
"As a cousin," said Enid faintly—"yes."
"Not as a lover?" The Rector spoke so low she could hardly hear a word.
"No."
"Not as a husband?"