“You, too,” said she.
I turned to walk with her. We strolled along cheerfully and contentedly, talking of the early spring, of flowers, and birds, and such neutral matters. I was fluent, she no less so. Our agitation disappeared; our sense of congeniality returned. Our acquaintance seemed to have lumped back to where it was before we had that first confidential talk together on the yacht. After perhaps an hour, as agreeable an hour as I ever spent, she said she must go home, as she had an engagement. On the way to the Sixty-fifth Street entrance the conversation lagged somewhat. We were both busily resolving the same thing—the matter of explanations. Now that I was seeing her again—a wholly different matter from inspecting my defaced and smirched and battered image of her—battered by the blows of my jealousy, and anger, and scorn—now that I was seeing her again, I could not but see and feel that she was in reality a sweet and simple and attractive woman. No doubt she had her faults—as all of us have—grave faults of inheritance, of education, of environment. But who was I that I should sit in judgment on her? I realized that I had judged her unjustly so far as her treatment of me was concerned. Assuming that she was tainted with snobbishness, assuming that her defects were as bad as I had thought in my worst paroxysms, still that did not alter the charms and the fine qualities.
“We are friends?” said I abruptly.
“I hope so,” said she. She added: “I know so.”
“Without discussion or explanation?”
“That is best—don’t you think?” replied she. “I am—not—not proud of some things I did.”
“Nor I, of some things I did.”
“I should like to forget them—my own and yours.”
“I, too. And explanations do not explain. Let sleeping dogs lie.”
She smiled and nodded. She said: