"Well, let's get the facts before we decide on that."
The facts, Cora intimated, were terrible. She was already engaged.
"To Lefferts?"
She nodded tragically.
Crane felt a strong inclination to laugh. The world took on a new aspect. Reality returned with a rush, and with it a strong, friendly affection for Cora. He hardly heard her long and passionate self-justification. She knew, she said, that she had given him every encouragement. Well, the truth was she had simply made up her mind to marry him; nothing would have pleased her mother more, but she did not intend to shelter herself behind obedience to her mother; she had intended to do it for her own ends.
"That was what I tried to tell you last evening in the garden, Burt. I deliberately schemed to marry you, but you mustn't think I did not like and admire you, in a way—"
"There's only one way, Cora."
This sent her off again into the depths of self-abasement. She had no excuse to offer, she kept protesting, and offered a dozen; the most potent being her uncertainty of Crane's own feelings for her.
"You behaved so strangely for a man in love, Burt," she wailed, "I was never sure."
"In the sense you mean, I was not in love with you, Cora."