"Would be the very thing to restore me to a proper state of health," she interrupts him, with the prettiest smile. "No, don't pretend you are sorry you brought me here. You know it is the sheerest hypocrisy on your part. You are glad, that you brought me here, I hope, and I"—deliberately—"am glad that you did."
"Do you mean that?" says Dysart, gravely. He had not seated himself beside her, and is now looking down her from a goodly height. "Do you know why I brought you?"
"To bring me back again as fresh as a daisy," suggests she, with a laugh that is spoiled in its birth by a glance from him.
"No, I did not think of you at all. I thought only of myself," says Dysart, speaking a little quickly now. "Call that selfish if you will—and yet——"
He stops short, and comes closer to her. "To think in that way was to think of you too. Joyce, there is at all events one thing you do know—that I love you."
Miss Kavanagh nods her head silently.
"There is one thing, too, that I know," says Dysart now with a little tremble in his voice, "that you do not love me!"
She is silent.
"You are honest," says he, after a pause. "Still"—looking at her—"if there wasn't hope one would know. Though the present is empty for me, I cannot help dwelling on the thought that the future may contain—something!"
"The future is so untranslatable," says she, with a little evasion.