She studied the letters already lying in an unsorted heap. They seemed not to interest. She pressed her handkerchief to her lips and raised her eyes. "I would have told you before—only—only,"—her beautiful mouth quivered and her eyes fell again—"you ... are difficult to talk to."
"Am I?" said Napier, in a tone of polite surprise, still studying his nails.
"For me. Yes.... You make it difficult. Why do you, Mr. Napier?"
That man must have a heart of stone to resist an appeal so voiced. "Perhaps you imagine it," he said, taking refuge in pulling out the rest of the letters and sorting them into piles.
She stood as though too discouraged to continue, too listless to go away. But when, in the midst of his sorting, Napier glanced at her, he discovered no listlessness in the eyes that kept tally of the letters he was dealing out. What earthly good does it do her to read the outsides of our envelopes? he wondered.
"I've been unhappy," she went on, "most unhappy under my enforced silence. I've wanted so much that you anyhow should know the truth."
"I don't know why I especially—" he began.
"No, no, no!" she said a little wildly, in spite of the hushed softness of her tone, "you don't know. And it's a good thing—a good thing you don't. But I'm too unhappy under the innocent little deceit that's been forced on me. You see, we had quarreled, the Pforzheims and I. That is, they quarreled. They each wanted to marry me. Oh, it was dreadful! They wanted to fight a duel...."
"About...?" Napier laid a long official envelope on the top of Sir William's pile.
"About me," she said with lowered eyes. "That was why I went to America. I couldn't bear it. I said: 'We are strangers from this day!' And so,"—she pressed her handkerchief again to her lips—"and so we met like that. I told them I wouldn't stay here an hour if they swerved a hair's breath from the role of strangers. Now,"—her voice altered suddenly as though out of weariness after immense effort—"now you know."