"No," I said with a gulp of my own. "That's not the word."
"It's not," she absently agreed.
"It's not," I repeated, "for I love you!"
She made no response to that foolish and untimely declaration. All her attention, in fact, seemed directed toward her driving.
"But I was so cowardly in that other thing," she persisted, out of this second silence. "Judging without understanding, condemning something I was only too ready to do myself!"
"And it made you hate me?"
"No—no. I hate myself!" And her gesture was one of protest, passionate protest.
"But you must have hated me."
"Witter," she said, speaking quite low and leaning a little closer to the wheel as she spoke, as though all her thoughts were on the shadowy road ahead of her, "I never hated you—never! I couldn't even make myself."
"Why?" I asked, scarcely knowing I had spoken.