She turned and looked at him again. Her face was pale, and there were shadows beneath her eyes, but in her smile was a ray of sunshine.
“Why can you not be content?” she asked gently. “Do you not find pleasure in spending an evening with me now and then?”
“You need not ask,” he murmured.
“But do you know that it would end all this if—if”—
“If?”
“If you were always as reckless as you have been to-night.”
“How hard it is to obtain justice in this world,” he cried, a faint smile on his lips. “How well I know that, far from being reckless, I have exercised the greatest self-restraint. Do you know,—please don’t turn your eyes away,—do you know what temptation I have resisted to-night? Is it not true that the grandeur of a victory lies in the martial power of the enemy overthrown? I would have been a coward had I retreated when you asked me to. Is it not better for us to sit here contentedly and talk of friendship?”
She glanced at him deprecatingly.
“Do you know,” she said in a tone of sadness, “that there is sometimes a mocking note in your voice and an expression on your face that make me wonder if you ever take yourself or any one else seriously?”
She had put into words a doubt that had never before been symbolized in his mind, though often vaguely felt. He was silent for a moment, wondering if it was only his youth, or a fundamental defect in character, that had awakened in her a questioning that found so unwelcome a response in his own heart. Unfortunate is that man who finds nothing at the very depths of his own personality but an interrogation mark.