"I've never been in love in my life." (Lassie felt this to be fearfully pointed.)
"How funny," said the man, "neither have I! Not really in love, you know."
Such thin ice! But the lure of the forest was there, and the lure of the absence of interruption, too. Lassie felt very remarkable. This was so delightful! So novel! Better than Mrs. Ray and the Kinnecot paper even. Why, this was even better than all Alva's love affair. Ten thousand times better! How stupid she had been.
"How funny!" she said, looking up.
"Why do you say that?" Ingram asked, quickly.
He seemed quite anxious to know why she thought it funny that he had never been in love before, and that was so delightful, too. A big, handsome man anxious as to what she thought! She felt as wise as if she had already made her début.
"I don't know why I said it," she answered, laughing; "it just came to me to say it. Was it silly to say? If so, please forgive me, because I didn't mean it."
"There's nothing to forgive," said Ingram; "only I never expected you to say anything of that sort. You don't know anything about me and you haven't any right to judge me." He spoke in quite a vexed, serious way, and Lassie felt as wise now as if she had made two débuts.
"But you were in love with Alva years ago, you know," she said.
"I wasn't really in love; I only thought that I was."