The answer was not what he expected. He flushed painfully.
“I—I thought perhaps you'd—you'd get a notion in your head that———” He, too, stopped for want of the right words to express himself without committing the egregious error of letting her see that it had been in his thoughts to accuse her of jealousy.
She waited for a moment. “That I might have got the notion in my head you did not love me any longer? Is that what you started to say?”
“Yes,” he confessed, averting his eyes.
“I've been unhappy at times, Freddy, but that is all,” she said steadily. “You see, I know how honest you really are. I know it far better than you know it yourself.”
“I wonder just how honest I am,” he muttered. “I wonder what would happen if——— But nothing can happen. Nothing ever will happen. Thank you, old girl, for saying what you said just now. It's—it's bully of you.”
He got up and began pacing the floor. She leaned back in her chair, deliberately giving him time to straighten out his thoughts for himself. Wiser than she knew herself to be, she held back the warm, loving words of encouragement, of gratitude, of belief.
But she was not prepared for the impetuous appeal that followed. He threw himself down beside her and grasped her hands in his. His face seemed suddenly old and haggard, his eyes burned like coals of fire. Then, for the first time, she had an inkling of the great struggle that had been going on inside of him for weeks and weeks.
“Listen, Lyddy,” he began nervously; “will you marry me to-morrow? Are you willing to take the chance that I'll be able to support you, to earn enough———”
“Why, Freddy!” she cried, half starting up from the couch. She was dumbfounded.