"Whatever happens then, we are friends," she said. "Remember that always, won't you? It—it will hurt me very much if you don't."
"Bless your heart!" said Guy, and smiled a twisted smile. "You were always generous, weren't you? Too generous sometimes. What did you want to rake me out of my own particular little comer of hell for? Was it a mistaken idea of kindness or merely curiosity? I wasn't anyhow doing you any harm there."
His words, accompanied by that painful smile, went straight to her heart. "Ah, don't—don't!" she said. "Did you think I could forget you so easily, or be any thing but wretched while you were there?"
He looked at her again, this time intently, "What can you be made of, Sylvia?" he said. "Do you mean to say you found it easy to forgive me?"
She dashed the tears from her eyes. "I don't remember that I was ever—angry with you," she said. "Somehow I realized—from the very first—that—that—it was just—bad luck."
"You amaze me!" he said.
She smiled at him. "Do I? I don't quite see why. Is it so amazing that one should want to pass on and make the best of things? That is how I feel now. It seems so long ago, Guy,—like another existence almost. It is too far away to count."
"Are you talking of the old days?" he broke in, in a voice that grated. "Or of the time a few weeks ago when you got here to find yourself stranded?"
She made a little gesture of protest. "It wasn't for long. I don't want to think of it. But it might have been much worse. Burke was—is still—so good to me."
"Is he?" said Guy. He was looking at her curiously, and instinctively she turned away, avoiding his eyes.