"Are you going so soon?" she asked in faltering tones.
"Would you like to have me stay?" he replied. "Do not be conventional, Johanna; I want to know your real feeling."
"We should all be glad to keep you here," she said.
He looked at her sadly, and rejoined, in a melancholy tone, "I asked how you felt; I care little about the others. But you,—what fault do you find with me, Johanna? I ought not, indeed, to ask such a question to-day. You all blame me, and you are apparently right in doing so. But before—I mean when you wrote me that letter—we parted more than friends; and then came that cold, stiff note!"
"It was not meant to be so; I meant it should be kind," she replied, without looking up at him.
"So much the worse!" he cried. "You meant to and could not. But I have no right to reproach you when you have just done me so friendly a service."
"Which you did not wish to accept from me," she answered him, reproachfully.
"Johanna, I trust you understand why it was so much harder for me to accept this kind of help from you than from the others?"
"Because you do not know me so well; I am not so near to you," she said.
"You do not, you cannot believe that," he hastily interposed. "To me you seem far nearer to me, and therefore it humiliates me all the more to——"