“But I didn't,” said Reddy quickly.
“You did,” said the young girl quietly. “That's why you acted toward me as you did the night you walked home with me. You would not have behaved in that way to any San Francisco young lady—and I'm not one of your—fast—MARRIED WOMEN.”
Reddy felt the hot blood mount to his cheek, and looked away. “I was foolish and rude—and I think you punished me at the time,” he stammered. “But you see I was right in saying you looked down on me,” he concluded triumphantly.
This was at best a feeble sequitur, but the argument of the affections is not always logical. And it had its effect on the girl.
“I wasn't thinking of THAT,” she said. “It's that you don't know your own mind.”
“If I said that I would stay and accept your father's offer, would you think that I did?” he asked quickly.
“I should wait and see what you actually DID do,” she replied.
“But if I stayed—and—and—if I told you that I stayed on YOUR account—to be with you and near you only—would you think that a proof?” He spoke hesitatingly, for his lips were dry with a nervousness he had not known before.
“I might, if you told father you expected to be engaged on those terms. For it concerns HIM as much as me. And HE engages you, and not I. Otherwise I'd think it was only your talk.”
Reddy looked at her in astonishment. There was not the slightest trace of coyness, coquetry, or even raillery in her clear, honest eyes, and yet it would seem as if she had taken his proposition in its fullest sense as a matrimonial declaration, and actually referred him to her father. He was pleased, frightened, and utterly unprepared.