The two men regarded each other in bewilderment. Then again Derrick was the first to speak.
“Grace,” he said, “you have misunderstood me.”
Grace answered him with a visible tremor.
“If,” he said, “it was to your love for Joan Lowrie you referred when you spoke to me of your trouble some months ago, I have misunderstood you. If the obstacles you meant were the obstacles you would find in the path of such a love, I have misunderstood you. If you did not mean that your heart had been stirred by a feeling your generous friendship caused you to regard as unjust to me, I have misunderstood you miserably.”
“My dear fellow!” Derrick exclaimed, with some emotion. “My dear fellow, do you mean to tell me that you imagined I referred to Miss Barholm?”
“I was sure of it,” was Grace's agitated reply. “As I said before, I have misunderstood you miserably.”
“And yet you had no word of blame for me?”
“I had no right to blame you. I had not lost what I believed you had won. It had never been mine. It was a mistake,” he added, endeavoring to steady himself. “But don't mind me, Derrick. Let us try to set it right; only I am afraid you will have to begin again.”
Derrick drew a heavy breath. He took up a paper-knife from the table, and began to bend it in his hands.
“Yes,” he said, “we shall have to begin again. And it is told in a few words,” he said, with a deliberateness painful in its suggestion of an intense effort at self-control. “Grace, what would you think of a man who found himself setting reason at defiance, and in spite of all obstacles confronting the possibility of loving and marrying—if she can be won—such a woman as Joan Lowrie?”