She was leaning against the frame of the open door into the hall, her hands behind her back. She was gazing out of the window across the room.
"You," he went on, "are as I'd like to be—as I imagined I was. Your sense of duty to the cause orders you elsewhere, and you go—like a good soldier, with never a backward glance."
She shook her head, but did not speak.
"With never a backward glance," he repeated. "While I—" He shut his lips together firmly and settled himself with fierce resolution to his work. "I beg your pardon," he said. "This is—cowardly. As I said before, I shall get myself in hand again, and go on."
She did not move. The breeze of the unseasonably warm and brilliant day fluttered her thick, loosely gathered hair about her brow. Her strange, barbaric little face suggested that the wind was blowing across it a throng of emotions like the clouds of a driven storm.
A long silence. He suddenly flung out his arms in a despairing gesture and let them fall to the table. At the crash she startled, gazed wildly about.
"Selma!" he cried. "I must say it. I love you."
A profound silence fell. After a while she went softly across the room and sat down at her desk.
"I think I've loved you from the first months of your coming here to work—to the old office, I mean. But we were always together—every day—all day long—working together—I thinking and doing nothing without your sharing in it. So, I never realized. Don't misunderstand. I'm not trying to keep you here. It's simply that I've got the habit of telling you everything—of holding back nothing from you."
"I was going," she said, "because I loved you."