“But I do.... I do.... Don’t you love me a little—just a little?”
“Oh,” she said in a little voice, “I am afraid....”
“Afraid? ... Of what?”
“I do not know.... I am so solitaire—so lonely—and I am afraid.”
“If you love me—”
“Non!... Non!... You do not love me. You only say. And if I love you—in a week, in two week, you go away to Amérique and leave me to be more solitaire.... I should be more sad....”
“No,” he declared, and was about to expostulate and to declare that he would never leave her, but the words would not come. His mother had stepped in. “You will love me,” he declared, in spite of his mother. “We will love each other—and there will be happiness.... If the best we can have is little moments of happiness, let us have all we can of them.” He was honest, thought he was being honest in his sophistry.
“You would go away—in a week, in a month....”
“No, no!”
He saw that she was crying, and suddenly she turned from him to bury her face in her arms and to sob quietly, not unrestrainedly, but with such a quietness as went with powerful impulse to his heart, and he gathered her to him again and tried to comfort her.