"No."
"Then I must simply take your word for it, and believe that some one worships from afar. It is rather a flattering and agreeable thought."
"There doesn't seem much hope for him," Luther Williams went on, "so long as you disclaim there being anyone else."
"I said it would be utterly absurd. Dear Mr. Williams, if you will keep my secret as if it were your own, I'll tell you that if it were not so ridiculously absurd to give the thing a second thought, there might be some one else."
"Why absurd?"
"He hasn't two pennies to rub together, and, oh dear, the dish washing ten hundred and ninety-five times a year. It is almost as bad to contemplate as the sitting opposite onion eyes and long necks an equal number of times."
"But if there were pennies, a moderate number, but still enough to pay for the dish-washing, what then?"
"That would be an entirely different thing." Gwen spoke with satisfaction. "I shouldn't mind getting a new winter suit only once in two years, and I shouldn't mind a little apartment, one of those nice studio flats—" She broke off suddenly and the tears sprang to her eyes. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh! Please, please, Mr. Williams—oh, what have I said? You'll know!"
He patted her hand gently. "There, there, little girl," he said, "never mind. It doesn't matter about my knowing. Do you suppose I'd ever betray you? But since I am now convinced of something I have only suspected, I'll be more urgent in begging you not to think for one moment of marrying a man you do not love. Don't do it, Miss Whitridge."
"Then I'll not marry at all," said Gwen, caressing the man's rough sleeve. "Aunt Cam and I can go on as we have been doing. We are very comfortable in our little suite of rooms. But, please, Mr. Williams, don't call me Miss Whitridge. Call me by my first name as you do the girls on the island. Call me Gwen."