She reflected a minute. "I know what makes you ask that. You think I've changed too suddenly. If so, I can explain it."
The silence in which he waited for her to continue assented in some sort to this reading of his thoughts.
"It isn't that I've changed," she said, at last, speaking thoughtfully, "so much as that I've wakened to a sense of what's real for me as distinguished from what's been forced and artificial. You may understand me better if I say that in leading my life up to—up to recently, I've been like a person at a play—a play in which the situations are interesting and the characters sympathetic, but which becomes like a dream the minute you leave the theater and go home. I feel that—that with you—I've—I've got home."
He would have said something, but she hurried on.
"I've not changed toward the play, except to recognize the fact that it was a play—for me. I knew it the instant I began to learn about papa's troubles. That was like a summons to me, like a call. When it came, everything else—the things I'd been taught to strive for and the people whom I had supposed to be the only ones worth living with, grew distant and shadowy, as though they belonged to a picture or a book. It seemed to me that I woke then for the first time to a realization of the life going on about me here in my own country, and to a sense of my share in it. If I hadn't involved myself so much—and involved some one else with me—my duty would have been clearer from the start. But Colonel Ashley's been so noble!—he's understood me so well!—he's helped me so much to understand myself!—that I can't help honoring him, honoring him with my whole heart, even if I see now that I don't—that I never did—care for him in the way—"
She pressed her handkerchief to her lips to keep back what might have become a sob.
"Did you know I—I loved you?" he asked, still speaking hoarsely.
"I thought you must," she said, simply. "I used to say I hoped you didn't—but deep down in my heart—"
He got up and strode to the window, where, with his back to her, he stared awhile at the last cold glimmer of the sun set. His big frame and broad shoulders shut out the light to such an extent that when he turned it was toward a darkened room. He could barely see her, as she sat sidewise to the desk, an arm along the back of her chair. His attitude bespoke a doubt in his mind that still kept him at a distance.
"You're not—you're not—saying all this," he pleaded, "because you think I've done anything that calls for a reward? I said once that I should never take anything from you, and I never shall—unless it's something you give only because you can't help it."