She was full of sorrow, but no fear. Dinah had long discounted the effect of the thing she was called to do. She did not expect anybody to be patient, or even reasonable, save her step-father.
Johnny appeared punctually, with his gun on his shoulder. They had not met for more than a month, but he ignored the past and greeted her with a kiss. She suffered it and reflected that this was the last time he would ever kiss her.
"At last," he said. "I've hated this job, Dinah; and you'll never know how much I hated it; but what could I do?"
"I don't know, Johnny. You could have wondered a bit more why I held off perhaps."
"And didn't I wonder? Didn't I puzzle myself daft about it? I don't know now—such a downright piece as you—I don't know now why you hung back. It wasn't natural."
"Yes it was—everything's natural that happens. It couldn't happen if it wasn't natural—old Arthur Chaffe said that once and I remembered it."
"If it was natural, then there was a reason," he answered, "and I'd like to hear it, Dinah—for curiosity."
"The reason is everything, John. I didn't know the reason myself for a good bit—the reason why I held away from you; and when I did, I was so put about that it seemed to alter my whole nature and make me shamed of being alive."
"That's pretty strong. Better we don't go back then. I'll ask no questions and forget. We'll begin again by getting married."
"No; the reason you've got to hear, worse luck. The reason why I behaved so strange was this, John: I'd made a terrible mistake—terrible for both of us. I thought the love that I had for you, and still have for you, and always shall, was the love of a woman for the man she's going to wed. Then, like a cloud, it came over me, denser and denser, that it was not. Listen—you must listen. I examined into it—give me that credit—I examined into it with all my senses tingling night and day. I never worked so hard about anything after I'd got over my first fright. And then I saw I'd slipped into this, being young and very ignorant about love—much more so than many girls younger than me; because I never was interested in men in the way they are. I found that out by talking to girls, and by the things they said when they knew I was tokened to you. They looked at marriage quite different from me, and they showed me that love is another thing altogether seen that way than as I'd seen it. They made me terrible uncomfortable, because I found they'd got a deep understanding that I had not got about it; and they laughed at me, when I talked, and said I didn't know what love meant. And—and—I didn't, Johnny. That's the naked truth."