"I mean," went on the musician, desperately, "that I don't know how to tell you all that is in my mind, dear. Perhaps it is best left unsaid. I don't know; but—when you ask me what I think of it, I can only feel that it is all sad, dreadfully sad. I'm afraid I have not made it very clear, have I?"
She moved her feet, and he came and sat down on the end of the sofa.
"Tell me what it is that is sad," she asked, shading her eyes with her hand.
"What you have been saying, that there isn't anybody," he said, and boldly moved the hand, and held it fast, and looked into her eyes.
"No more there is,—except you," she answered recklessly, and looked back at him for a moment.
Something surged up to his lips in the silence of the next few minutes, and he held his breath and tightened his grasp on the cold fingers before he said it. Then she pulled away her hand almost roughly, and spoke quickly.
"Do you know it is nearly eleven? Norah had a bad night with the baby last night, and you look awfully tired too. Hadn't you better be moving?"
So he did not say it after all.
"You have not told me what you think yet. I suppose you are only laughing at me," she said, when he bade her good-bye.
He found himself smiling in a conventional manner; he could not have said why.