VII
BYGONES
A telegram had been thrust under my door—"I must see you. Don't fail to stop off here on your way back. Answer. Carlotta."
Again she was at the station in her phaeton. Her first look, long before I was near enough for speech, showed me how her mood had changed; but she waited until we were clear of the town. "Forgive me," she then said in the abrupt, direct manner which was the expression of her greatest charm, her absolute honesty. "I've got the meanest temper in the world, but it don't last, and as soon as you were gone I was ashamed of myself."
"I don't understand why you are making these apologies," said I, "and I don't understand why you were angry."
"That's what it means to be a man," she replied. "Your letter about your mother made me furious. You hadn't ever urged me to hurry up the wedding on your own account. And your letter made me feel as if, while you personally didn't care whether we ever married or not, still for your mother's sake you were willing to—to sacrifice yourself."
"Let me see my letter," said I.
"I tore it into a thousand pieces," said she. "But I don't mean that you really wrote just that. You didn't. But you made me jealous of your mother, and my temper got hold of me, and then I read the meanest kind of things into and under and all round every word. And—I'm sorry."
I could find nothing to say. I saw my freedom slipping from me. I watched it, sick at heart; yet, on the other hand, I neither tried nor wished to detain it, though I could easily have made a renewal of our engagement impossible. I have no explanation for this conflict of emotions and motives.