Then she began to know what she felt. There came back to her in flashes scenes from the past weeks in which she had done her worst by him; in which she had swept him aside, loathed him, set her feet on him, used the devices of an ingenious demon to discomfit and show him at his poorest and least ready. And he had not been giving a thought to the thing for which she had striven to punish him. And he plainly did not even hate her. His mind was clear, as water is clear. He had come back to her this evening to do her a good turn—a good turn. Knowing what she was capable of in the way of arrogance and villainous temper, he had determined to do her—in spite of herself—a good turn.
“I don't understand you,” she faltered.
“I know you don't. But it's only because I'm so dead easy to understand. There's nothing to find out. I'm just friendly—friendly—that's all.”
“You would have been friends with me!” she exclaimed. “You would have told me, and I wouldn't let you! Oh!” with an impulsive flinging out of her hand to him, “you good—good fellow!”
“Good be darned!” he answered, taking the hand at once.
“You are good to tell me! I have behaved like a devil to you. But oh! if you only knew!”
His face became mature again; but he took a most informal seat on the edge of the table near her.
“I do know—part of it. That's why I've been trying to be friends with you all the time.” He said his next words deliberately. “If I was the woman Jem Temple Barholm had loved wouldn't it have driven me mad to see another man in his place—and remember what was done to him. I never even saw him, but, good God! “—she saw his hand clench itself—“when I think of it I want to kill somebody! I want to kill half a dozen. Why didn't they know it couldn't be true of a fellow like that!”
She sat up stiffly and watched him.
“Do—you—feel like that—about him?”