"I did not love you, save as all right-minded men love and admire a sweet young girl; but I believed in you; there was something about you that aroused trust and confidence. Besides—I tell you this frankly—I thought I should succeed. I certainly did not want to be repulsed twice in one day. I see now that I was misled by Miss Vanhorn. But I did not see it then, and when I spoke to you, I fully expected that you would answer yes.
"You answered no, Anne, but you still saved me. I still believed in you. And more than ever after that last interview. I went away from Caryl's early the next morning, and two days later started for the West. I was hurt through and through, angry with myself, disgusted with life. I wanted to breathe again the freedom of the border. Yet through it all your memory was with me as that of one true, pure, steadfast woman-heart which compelled me to believe in goodness and steadfastness as possibilities in women, although I myself had been so blindly befooled. This is what you, although unconsciously, have done for me: it is an inestimable service.
"I was not much moved from my disgust until something occurred which swept me out of myself—I mean the breaking out of the war. I had not believed in its possibility; but when the first gun was fired, I started eastward at an hour's notice." Here Dexter rose, and with folded arms walked to and fro across the floor. "The class of people you met at Caryl's used to smile and shrug their shoulders over what is called patriotism—I think they are smiling no longer."—(Here Anne remembered "After that attack on Fort Sumter, it seemed to me the only thing to do") "but the tidings of that first gun stirred something in my breast which is, I suppose, what that word means. As soon as I reached Pennsylvania, I went up to the district where my mines are, gathered together and equipped all the volunteers who would go. I have been doing similar work on a larger scale ever since. I should long ago have been at the front in person were it not that the Governor requires my presence at home, and I am well aware also that I am worth twenty times more in matters of organization than I should be simply as one more man in the field."
This was true. Gregory Dexter's remarkable business powers and energy, together with his wealth, force, and lavish liberality, made him the strong arm of his State throughout the entire war.
He asked for no comment upon his story; he had told it briefly as a series of facts. But from it he hoped that the listener would draw a feeling which would make her rest content under his friendly aid. And he succeeded.
But before he went away she told him that while accepting all the house contained, she would rather return those of his gifts which had been personal to herself.
"Why?"
"I would rather do it, but I do not know how to explain the feeling," she answered, frankly, although her face was one bright blush.
"If you do not, I do," said Dexter, smiling, and looking at her with the beginnings of a new interest in his eyes. "As you please, of course, although I did try to buy a good shawl for you, Anne. Are you not very poorly dressed?"
"Plainly and inexpensively. Quite warmly, however."