Claudia felt this to be very disagreeable indeed. She said slowly—
“Have you done?”
“Naturally you’re offended,” he went on, with a sudden softening of his voice. “But if you think it fairly over, I believe I may get you to own that it can’t have been very pleasant for me to speak?”
Her face cleared, and she looked frankly at him.
“I suppose it was not,” she allowed. “Did you do it on my account, or because you disliked any one you had to do with being laughed at?” But before he had recovered from this rebuke, she added with a certain sweetness which was noticeable in her at times, “Still, you must not think that I am angry. I suppose I was for a moment, but it was foolish of me, because you were right, quite right, to say out what was in your mind. And I dare say, too, that you are right in what you think. I suppose it seems so much more important to me than to them all—not on my own account, but because we feel we are making a beginning—that I have let myself talk too much about it.”
“So that you forgive me?” he said, quite humbly for him.
She laughed.
“I forgive you. I dare say that by-and-by I shall have reached the height of being even grateful. But now you must let me go, because if I am not to talk I must work all the harder.”
“You can always talk to me,” he said eagerly.
“Oh no,” she said, escaping, with a shake of her head. “I must break myself of a bad habit.”