"Why would you not show me that story, Arnold?" she asked softly.
I met her eyes fixed upon me with a peculiar intentness. I tried to escape them, but I could not. It was impossible for me to lie to her. My voice shook as I answered her.
"Don't ask me, Isobel!" I said. "We all make mistakes sometime, you know. Not to show you that story when you asked me was one of mine."
"If you had it here——?"
"If I had it here I would show it you," I declared.
She sighed. She did not seem altogether satisfied.
"Sometimes, Arnold," she said thoughtfully, "you puzzle me very much. You treat me always as though I were a child; you keep me at arm's length always, as though there were between us some impassable barrier, as though it could never be possible for you to come into my world or for me to pass into yours. I know that you are wiser and cleverer than I am, but I can learn. I have been learning all the time. Are we always to remain at this great distance?"
"Dear Isobel," I answered, "you forget that I am more than twice your age. You are eighteen, and I am thirty-four. I cannot make myself young like you. I cannot call back the years, however much I might wish to do so. And for the rest, I have been your guardian. I, a poor writer of no particular family and very meagre fortune, and you my ward, a princess standing at the opposite pole of life. I have had to remember these things, Isobel."
She leaned a little further across the table. Again her eyes held mine, and I felt my heart beat like a boy's at the touch of her soft white fingers as she laid her hand on mine.
"I wish," she murmured, "oh, I wish——"