"Not till I've said what I want to. I'm sorry you found out—about the book. I was going to tell you—later. But now that you have, we can't ignore it. It was the merest coincidence that I met you before your first letter came. And I was deep in it, before I realized that you were bound to dislike me, as I really am,—and then I couldn't tell you. Things you said in your letters made it absolutely impossible for me. And for reasons of my own, I had preserved my incognito very carefully. Only Uncle John knew, and Wright and my Mother—and—your Father—"
Father! And his mother! The little "red-haired, blue-eyed" lady who had written to me: to whom I had confided my admiration for her son!
Minute by minute, shame was flooding me: shame and a terribly tired feeling.
"Does your mother know—?" I asked.
"That we are married? No," he answered, "I had reasons for not telling her just yet. She knows I am in Cuba, of course. You have never asked me about my people so I hardly thought it worth while to mention her to you—under the circumstances."
"I'm sorry it has turned out as it has," he said, after a pause. "You don't understand—"
I could agree with him there.
"I'm afraid not," I said.
He lifted his shoulders ever so slightly, a gesture of defeat.
"Please—" he said, but something in my eyes stopped him. His face grew very hard.