"... When it 's been going on ... for two years. Ever since ... I came. You call that sudden?"
"So long as that?" said Pam, in open-eyed amaze. "Oh, I never knew it. Indeed I did n't. I had n't the faintest idea."
He passed his hand across his forehead with a look of pain.
"... And I thought I could n't keep it from you—even when I tried. I fancied you read me through and through, and understood what I wanted to ask of you—but could n't, till now. You looked as though you did. Did n't you? Don't play with me. Tell me. You must have known."
Pam shook a head of pitying negation.
"It was n't that I did n't try," she told him, "... for I tried my best. But I could n't. I never thought ... you cared one little bit about me. If I 'd thought you cared for me ... there are lots of unkind things I 'd never have done that I did do, without thinking. I, would n't have followed you into the room when you were alone, and looked at you, and tried to make you look at me, and spoken to you. Never. You 'll believe I would n't when I say so, won't you? All the time I was only trying to make friends with you—that I was already, though I did n't know it. And all the time you thought ... that I saw what was the matter with you, and knew why you would n't look at me, and what you meant when you turned your back. But I did n't. Indeed I did n't. Oh, how spiteful and cruel you must have thought me," she said, with the beautiful wetness of tears about her lashes. "And I did n't mean it for cruelty a bit. I meant it for kindness. It 's all been a mistake from the first."
"Is it a mistake ... now?" he asked.
"A mistake now?" said Pam, and looked at him for a moment; and then drew a breath, and looked at him again; and drew another breath, and still looked at him; while her lower lip broke loose and fluttered a little, like a hovering butterfly, and stopped, and fluttered a second time, and her lashes fell by an almost imperceptible shade—less a falling of the lashes, indeed, than a falling of something not definable—a thin, gauzy, darkening veil of trouble, it seemed to be, over the very look itself. "I hope not," she said; but her voice and her eyes and her lips belied the hope she spoke of. "We understand each other now ... don't we?"
"What do we understand?" he asked huskily.
"I thought you knew," Pam said, setting her gaze on him, in intrepid wonderment to think he should comprehend so badly, or so soon forget. "I 've just ... been telling you."