At first she did not understand his laughter, but, after a moment, she did, and joined her own to it, though with a certain tremulousness.
"It IS funny, isn't it?" said Joe, wiping the moisture from his eyes. Then all trace of mirth left him. "Is it really YOU, sitting here and laughing with me, Ariel?"
"It seems to be," she answered, in a low voice. "I'm not at all sure."
"You didn't think, yesterday afternoon," he began, almost in a whisper,—"you didn't think that I had failed to come because I—" He grew very red, and shifted the sentence awkwardly: "I was afraid you might think that I was—that I didn't come because I might have been the same way again that I was when—when I met you at the station?"
"Oh no!" she answered, gently. "No. I knew better."
"And do you know," he faltered, "that that is all over? That it can never happen again?"
"Yes, I know it," she returned, quickly.
"Then you know a little of what I owe you."
"No, no," she protested.
"Yes," he said. "You've made that change in me already. It wasn't hard—it won't be—though it might have been if—if you hadn't come soon."