“He’s very—” she hesitated, not liking to seem disloyal to her father. Finally she said “peculiar,” and then further qualified it by adding “sometimes.”
The sadness that lies so near to the joy in lovers’ hearts came over them, and yet they found a kind of joy in that too.
“I’ll go to him, of course,” Marley said presently.
“Oh, you’re so brave!”
But this tribute did not tend to reassure Marley. It rather suggested terrors he had not thought of. Yet in the necessity of maintaining the manly spirit he forced a laugh.
“Of course,” he continued, “I’ll go to him. I meant to from the first.”
“But not just yet,” she pleaded.
“Well,” he yielded, not at all unwillingly, “it shall be as you say.”
He could not dispel her sadness, nor could he conquer his own. A little tremor ran through her, and he felt it electrically along his arm.
“What is it, sweetheart?” he pleaded. “Tell me, won’t you? We must have no secrets, you know.”