"Afraid?"
She nodded, and again he noticed that the pupils of her eyes were widening and contracting.
"And that is why you said you wouldn't marry me?"
"Yes, that is why."
He stopped in perplexity. He saw that, in spite of her bravest efforts, the girl was almost fainting under the strain of these questions.
"You dear, darling child," said Lloyd, as a wave of pity took him, "I'm a brute to make you talk about this."
But Alice answered anxiously: "You understand it's nothing I have done that is wrong, nothing I'm ashamed of?"
"Of course," he assured her. "Let's drop it. We'll never speak of it again."
"I want to speak of it. It's something strange in my thoughts, dear, or—or my soul," she went on timidly, "something that's—different and that—frightens me—especially at night."
"What do you expect?" he answered in a matter-of-fact tone, "when you spend all your time in a cold, black church full of bones and ghosts? Wait till I get you away from there, wait till we're over in God's country, living in a nice little house out in Orange, N. J., and I'm commuting every day."