“You don’t. The me that’s horrid is a spiteful little cat, and I may become the horrid me at any moment Meester Dèek, you’d have to marry us both. I’m not a restful person at the best. I can never say the kind things that I feel. Most of the time I ought to be whipped and shaken. I suppose if I fell really in love it might be different.”
“Then fall really in love.”
She seemed to ponder his advice. “My love’s such a feeble little trickle. Yours is so deep and wide; mine would be lost in it And yet I do like you. I speak to you the way I speak to no other man. I could go on speaking to you forever. If I’d seen as much of any other man, he’d have bored me long ago.”
“And isn’t that just saying that you do love me?”
“Perhaps.” Her head stirred against his shoulder. Then: “No. That’s only saying that you’ve not found fault with me and that you’ve let me be selfish. You need some one who’ll be to you what your mother has been to your father. I’ll hate her when you find her; but, oh, Meester Deek, there are heaps of better girls in the world. I can’t cook, can’t sew, can’t even be agreeable very often. I want to live, and make mistakes, and then experiment afresh.—Perhaps I don’t know what I want. I feel more than friendship for you, but much less than love, because if it were love, it would stop at nothing. Oh, I know, though you don’t think it. Perhaps one day, when I’m older and wiser, I’ll look back and regret to-night. But I’m not going to let you spoil your life.”
“You’d make it.”
“Spoil it.”
She released herself from him. He helped her to rise.
“I’ve at least been an education for your soul. Do say it. I haven’t done you nothing but harm, have I?”
His emotion choked him.