It seemed almost true, with him looking so earnestly and hopefully at her, and in the moonlight—moonlight that can soften even falsehood until true and false seem gently to merge. She hesitated to say No. "I don't know just what I thought," she replied.
But her tone jarred on the young man whose nerves were as sensitive as a thermostat. "You mean, when you saw me again, you felt you really didn't care," he said, drawing back so that she could not see his face.
"No," she replied, earnestly and honestly. "Not that." And then she flung out the truth. "Ross has engaged himself to Theresa Howland, a girl with a huge big fortune. And I—I—"
"You needn't say it," he interrupted, feeling how it was distressing her to confess. "I understand."
"I wasn't altogether—wicked," she pleaded. "I didn't think of you wholly because I thought you cared for me. I thought of you chiefly because I feel more at home with you than with anyone else. It has always seemed to me that you see me exactly as I am, with all the pretenses and meannesses—yet not unkindly, either. And, while you've made me angry sometimes, when you have refused to be taken in by my best tricks, still it was as one gets angry with—with oneself. It simply wouldn't last. And, as you see, I tell you anything and everything."
"You thought you'd engage yourself to me—and see how it worked out?"
"I'm afraid I did."
A pause. She knew what he was going to say next, and waited for him to say it. At last it came. "Well, now that there's no deception, why shouldn't you?"
"Somehow, I don't seem to mind—about Ross, so much. It—it was while I was in with father this evening. You haven't seen him since he became so ill, but you will understand why he is a rebuke to all mean thoughts. I suppose I'll be squirming again to-morrow, but to-night I feel—"
"That Ross has done you a great service. That you've lost nothing but a dangerous illusion; that you have been honorable with him, and all the wrong and the shame are upon him. You must feel it, for it is true."