“Did you,” he asked slowly, holding her eyes 205 in spite of her desire to lower them, “read the dedication?”
And by their subtle confession he knew that this was one of the parts she had read “many times.”
“Yes,” she replied, trying to speak lightly, but breathing quickly, “and I wondered who T. L. P. might be.”
“And so you didn’t know,” in slow, disappointed tones, “that they stood for the name I gave you when I first met you––the name by which I always think of you? It was with your perfect understanding of my old fancies in mind that I wrote the book. And so I dedicated it to you, thinking if you read it you would know even without the inscription. Some one suggested––”
“It was Fletcher,” she began.
“Oh, you know Wilder?”
“Yes, I’ve known him always. He has told me of your days in South America together and how he told you to dedicate it. And he wondered who T. L. P. might be.”
Her face, bent over the firelight, looked small and white; her beautiful eyes were fixed and grave. Then suddenly she lifted them to his with the artlessness of a child.
“I did know,” she confessed. “At least, I hoped––I claimed it as my book, anyway, but I thought your memory of those summers at the farm might not have been as keen as mine.”