"No—I ought not to say it."
"Mysteries again?" Marion stopped beside him and looked down into his face.
"The same, if you choose to call it a mystery."
"I wish you would speak out, my dear friend," said Marion gravely. "I feel all the time that there is something in your mind which you wish to say to me, but which you will not, or cannot, or dare not say. Am I right?"
"I do not think you understand what friendship really means."
"Friendship?" Brett exclaimed. "For you? No, perhaps I do not. I wish I did. I would give a great deal if I could."
"I do not in the least understand," said Marion, sitting down again. "You, my best friend, tell me in the most serious, not to say mysterious way, that you do not know what friendship means, when you are proving every day that you do. I hate secrets! Very few friendships will bear them. I wish there were none between us."
"Ah, so do I!"
"Then let there be none," said Marion in a tone that was almost authoritative. "Why should there be? In the dear old times when I was so unhappy and you were so good to me, we had no secrets, at least none that I knew of. Why should we have any now?"