Another long silence, then he said: "About—Miss Gordon. I suppose you were thinking of the things I confided to you last year?"
"Yes, I was," confessed Jane.
"That's all over," said Mayor and prospective Governor Hull. "I found I was mistaken in her."
"Didn't you tell me that she refused you?" pressed Jane, most unkindly.
"We met again after that," said Davy—by way of proving that even the most devoted apostle of civic righteousness is yet not without his share of the common humanity, "and from that time I felt differently toward her.... I've never been able to understand my folly.... I wonder if you could forgive me for it?"
Davy was a good deal of a bore, she felt. At least, he seemed so in this first renewing of old acquaintance. But he was a man of purpose, a man who was doing much and would do more. And she liked him, and had for him that feeling of sympathy and comprehension which exists among people of the same region, brought up in much the same way. Instead of cutting him off, she temporized. Said she with a serenely careless laugh that might have let a man more expert in the ways of women into the secret of how little she cared about him: "You mean forgive you for dropping me so abruptly and running after her?"
"That's not exactly the way to put it," objected he.
"Put it any way you like," said Jane. "I forgive you. I didn't care at the time, and I don't care now."
Jane was looking entrancing in that delicate light. Davy was noting—was feeling—this. Also, he was reflecting—in a high-minded way—upon the many material, mental and spiritual advantages of a marriage with her. Just the woman to be a governor's wife—a senator's wife—a president's wife. Said he:
"Jane, my feeling for you has never changed."