Alston looked at Anne and smiled upon her and involuntarily she smiled back, though she saw no cause for cheerfulness in the dismal errand she had come on. She started a little, too, for Alston, in the most matter of fact way, began with her first name.
"Anne," said he, "I have for a long time been—" he paused for a word. The ones he found were all too dignified, too likely to be wanted in a higher cause—"bewitched," he continued, "over Esther Blake."
The colour ran deeper into Anne's face.
"You don't want," she said, "to do anything that might hurt her? I shouldn't want to, either. But it isn't Esther we're talking about. It's Madame Beattie."
"I know," said Alston, "but I want you to know I have been very much—I've made a good deal of a fool of myself over Mrs. Blake."
Still he obstinately would not say he had been in love. Anne, looking at him with the colour rising higher and higher, hardly seemed to understand. But suddenly she did.
"You don't mean—" she stammered. "Mr. Choate, she's married, you know, even if she and Jeff aren't together any more. Esther is married."
"I know it," said Alston drily. "I've wished they weren't married. I've wished I could ask her to marry me. But I don't any longer. You won't understand at all why I say it now. Sometime I'll tell you when you've noticed how I have to stand up against my cut and dried ways. Anne, I'm talking to you."
She had got on her feet and was fumbling with the upper button of her coat which had not been unloosed. But that she didn't remember now. She was in a mechanical haste of making ready to go. Alston rose, too, and was glad to find he was the taller. It gave him a mute advantage and he needed all he could get.
"I'm telling you something quite important," he said, in a tone that set her momentarily and fallaciously at ease. "It's going to be very important to both of us. Dear Anne! darling Anne!" He broke down and laughed, her eyes were so big with the surprise of it, almost, it might be, with fright. "That's because I'm in love with you," said Alston. "I've forgotten every other thing that ever happened to me, all except this miserable thing I've just told you. I had to tell you, so you'd know the worst of me. Darling Anne!" He liked the sound of it.