"No use talking about that. It's best for us to separate best for us both. You've been good to me—you'll never know how good. And I can't play you a mean trick. I wish I could be selfish enough to do it, but I can't."
"You don't love me. That's the reason."
"Maybe it is. Yes, I guess that's why I've got the courage to be square with you. Anyhow, John, you can't afford to care for me. And if I cared for you, and put off the parting—why it'd only put off what I've got to go through with before——" She did not finish; her eyes became dreamy.
"Before what?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said, returning with a sigh. "Something I see—yet don't see in the darkness, ahead of me."
"I can't make you out," cried he. Her expression moved him to the same awe she inspired in Etta—a feeling that gave both of them the sense of having known her better, of having been more intimate with her when they first met her than they ever had been since or ever would be again.
When Redmond embraced and kissed her for the last time, he was in another and less sympathetic mood, was busy with his own wounds to vanity and perhaps to heart. He thought her heartless—good and sweet and friendly, but without sentiment. She refused to help him make a scene; she refused to say she would write to him, and asked him not to write to her. "You know we'll probably see each other soon."
"Not till the long vacation—not till nearly July."
"Only three months."
"Oh, if you look at it that way!" said he, piqued and sullen. Girls had always been more than kind, more than eager, when he had shown interest.