He stared at me through the deepening dusk. "Don't love you? Good Lord, Lady Peggy, I'm a fool about you! Any dough-head can see that."
"Ah, but I'm not a dough-head. I know you don't love me. You proved that last night."
"For the life of me, I can't think what you mean. I I told you I'd try to be your friend, but you knew what that meant! Don't keep me in suspense."
"You've hurt my feelings dreadfully. I've been brooding over it all day."
"I—hurt your feelings? Why, you ought to know I wouldn't for the world——"
"But you did. You refused to trust me. There can be no love without trust."
"I'd trust you with my life. I can't to save myself guess what you're driving at——" He stopped suddenly. My meaning had dawned on him in that instant.
"Now you've guessed, haven't you?" I asked, when for a few seconds, which I counted with heartbeats, he had sat tensely silent.
"Maybe I have. But see here, Peggy, you aren't holding that against me, are you? It wouldn't be fair. I'd trust you with anything of my own; but when it comes to other people's business—official business——"
"Did you ever hear the lines, 'Trust me not at all, or all in all?'" I continued to torture him. "It was Tennyson who made Vivien say those words to Merlin. She was deceiving him, and meant to ruin him when she'd wormed out his secret; for that reason, it isn't a very appropriate quotation. But, otherwise, it's particularly so. If you trusted me for yourself, you'd trust me for others, too. It's the same thing—or else it's nothing. I'm not like Vivien. I don't mean to deceive you, or ruin you, or anything horrid. And I couldn't if I would!"