"No," she responded coolly. "I won't. But I guess I'm lonely for much the same reason that you are."
"I have never been anything else since I became a man," said Merefleet.
"Ah!" she said. "I might say the same. Fact is"—she spoke with sudden startling emphasis—"I ought to be dead. And I'm not. That's my trouble in a nutshell."
"Great heavens, child!" Merefleet exclaimed, with an involuntary start. "Don't talk like that!"
"Why not?" she asked innocently. "Is it wrong?"
"It isn't literal truth, you know," he answered gravely. "You will not persuade me that it is."
"I'm no judge then," she said, with a note of recklessness in her voice.
"You have your cousin," Merefleet pointed out, feeling that he was on uncertain ground, yet unaccountably anxious to prove it. "You are not utterly alone while he is with you."
She uttered a shrill little laugh. "Why," she said, "I believe you think I'm in love with Bert."
Merefleet was silent.