Sophie warded off the impetuous outstretching of his arms and sprang to her feet, facing him with all the delicate color gone out of her cheeks, a sudden heave to her breast. She shook her head. "No," she said. "I won't penalize myself to that extent—nor you. I won't bind myself by any such promise. I won't even admit that I might."
He caught her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.
"Yesterday," he said hoarsely, "you let me kiss you—your lips burned me—you rested your head against me as if it belonged there. What sort of a woman are you? Sophie! Sophie!"
"I know," she returned. "But yesterday was yesterday. This is another day. Yesterday—oh, you wouldn't understand if I told you. Yesterday I was bursting with happiness, like a bird in the spring. I like you, big man with the freckled face. You came down here and stood beside me and smiled at me. And—and that's all—a minute's madness. We can't marry on that. I can't. I won't."
His fingers tightened on the rounded arms. He shook her again with a restrained savagery. If he hurt her she did not flinch, nor did her gray eyes, cloudy now and wistful, waver before the passionate fire in his.
"Sophie," he went on, "you don't know what this means to me. Don't you care a little?"
"Yes," she answered slowly. "Perhaps more than a little. I'm made that way, I suppose. It isn't hard for me to love. But one doesn't—"
"Then why," he demanded, "why refuse to give me a hope? Why, if you care in the least, is there no chance for me? It isn't just a sudden fancy. I've been feeling it grow and struggling to repress it, ever since I first saw you. You say you care—yet you won't even think of marrying me. I can't understand that at all. Why?"
"Do you want to know? Can't you see good grounds why we two, of all people, should not marry?" she asked evenly. "Can you see anything to make it desirable except a—a welling up of natural passion? Don't hold my arms so tight. You hurt."
He released his unthinking grip and stepped back a pace, his expression one of hurt bewilderment at the paradox of Sophie's admission and refusal.