She lifted her head with a quick blush, and the terrified wish that he should not, at the cost of all his notions of correctness, lapse into the blunder of becoming “personal.”
“You’ve wondered?” She smiled back bravely.
“Do you suppose I haven’t?” His look dwelt on her. “Yes, I daresay that was what you thought of me.”
She had her answer pat—“Why, frankly, you know, I didn’t think of you.” But the mounting tide of her poor dishonored memories swept it indignantly away. If it was his correctness to ignore, it could never be hers to disavow.
“ Was that what you thought of me?” she heard him repeat in a tone of sad insistence; and at that, with a quick lift of her head, she resolutely answered: “How could I know what to think? I had no word from you.”
If she had expected, and perhaps almost hoped, that this answer would create a difficulty for him, the gaze of quiet fortitude with which he met it proved that she had underestimated his resources.
“No, you had no word. I kept my vow,” he said.
“Your vow?”
“That you shouldn’t have a word—not a syllable. Oh, I kept it through everything!”
Lizzie’s heart was sounding in her ears the old confused rumor of the sea of life, but through it she desperately tried to distinguish the still small voice of reason.