They went down the path together, and reaching the hammock she took her usual seat among its cushions, and he his upon a rough rustic bench near her.
"I was thinking before you came," he said, "of what you said this afternoon of my having something against you. I won't deny that there has been something in my thoughts of you that often has been miserable, and you were right in saying it was not in them to-day. It has not been in them for several days. What I was thinking just now was that it could never be in them again."
She did not stir.
"Don't you see," he went on, "I can't go back. If there had been nothing but to-day, I could not go back—beyond to-day. It would always be a factor in my arguments about you. I should always say to myself when things seemed to go wrong: 'There was no mistake about that day,—she was real then,' and I should trust you against everything. To-day—and in the other days too—I have seen you as you are, and because of that I should trust you in spite of everything."
"Oh!" she cried. "Don't trust me too much!" There was anguish in the sound, and he recognized it.
"I can't trust you too much," he answered, with obstinacy. "No honest human being can trust another honest human being too much."
"Am I an honest human being?" she said.
"I shall believe you one until the end," he returned.
"That is saying a great deal," was her reply.
"Listen," he said. "You know I am not like Arbuthnot and the rest. If I were to try to be like them I should only fail. But, though you never told me that I could be of any use to you, and you never will, I shall know if the time should come—and I shall wait for it. Have we not all of us something that belongs to ourselves, and not to the world,—it may be a pleasure or a pain, it does not matter which?"