Presently Marie spoke:
“Jim,” she said. It was the first time she had called him by his first name. “Jim, I want to go somewhere, do something, to-night. I want to get away from this house.”
Jim looked at her a moment, and she was hurt to see he was not thinking of her, had hardly understood her words. Perhaps she, too, had put on his silence the same interpretation as the widow.
“Go somewhere?” he said, vaguely, then flushed at his awkwardness. “I’m sorry, Marie. I was a long way off when you spoke. It was rude, wasn’t it? But I’ve had such a heap of things to think about these last days that some of them insist on hanging round outside of business hours. Has something happened? Any trouble with Mrs. Stickney?”
“No. No trouble. I just want to get away. I want you to talk to me and keep me from thinking about myself—and some things. I—I’m afraid tonight, Jim.”
Jim bit his lip boyishly.
“Confound it!” he said. “I simply can’t get away to-night. Business. But don’t I wish I could go with you some place—and talk to you. There are things I wanted to say to you the other night, Marie, that—well, I guess it took time for me to think of. I want to talk to you about the same thing, for I’ve been thinking about the same thing. I was too abrupt. You were right to give me the answer you did—but I’ve got some more arguments now, a lot of them.”
Marie’s face softened. How boyish, how eagerly boyish he was!
“You mustn’t talk about that,” she said, gently. “I can’t change. Your work is here. You’re tied to it. And I must get away from it—to stay. Can’t you understand? Don’t misunderstand me, Jim. It wasn’t to give you a chance to ask me to reconsider that I asked you to go out with me. No. No. It was to have you to talk to. To have the consciousness that I was with a man—a man who—was—a human being.” Her voice faltered. “I wanted you to say to me some of the things you have said before—about people being good, about the world being good, about faith and trustworthiness and honor. I don’t know those things, but I want to hear about them—to-night. Because I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”