She was on her defence. "I told you I didn't know enough," she said. "But I had never loved anybody before—in that way. Of course I gave all the best that was in me."
He caught his breath. It wouldn't have been she if she hadn't done that. But what a treasure for a man to throw away! "He can't have been fit to black your boots," he said, "or he'd have waited for you for twenty years."
She felt the need of a lighter note. "I should have been old and ugly by that time," she said.
"You'd have been neither. But if you'd lost all your looks you'd have been just the same."
She was touched by the almost impersonal conviction in his speech, and comforted by his belief in her. But she was not yet ready. "It's very kind of you to say that," she said. "He didn't think so. And I'm very glad he didn't now. It took me a little time to get over it, but I have got over it. I don't want anything that I haven't got now. I love my family, and they love me, and we're all going to be happy together for a long time. Now, I think we'll go in."
He rose obediently and walked back to the house by her side. She had given him no opening such as he ardently longed for, no response that might bid him hope. But he could wait for that. It would come in time, if mortal man could do anything to induce it.
As for her, she was in a more emotional state than appeared on the surface. Such an experience as she had undergone—to love for the first time, and to have the love rejected—could scarcely help hardening a nature such as hers, yielding and trustful. But the hardening would not set in until the wound became a scar; and he had opened it again, and delayed the process.
It served him better than he knew that he had done so.