“Perhaps I ought not to have said precisely what I did. I ought to have remembered that you are morbid; that by your brooding you have wrought yourself into a diseased condition of mind. When you recover, you will understand clearly enough that it is every honest man’s privilege to woo where his heart directs. He must woo honestly, of course, but the honest wooing of a man is no wrong and no insult to a maid. Only a morbid self-consciousness like your own could imagine otherwise.”
“Then you would wish me to—”
“I wish nothing in the case. I have said all that I shall say. If I have spoken severely, it has been because I have little patience with your diseased imaginings. I don’t think I like you very well just now.”
She left him to think.
XXIV
EVELYN’S BOOK
LATE that day, came a letter and a parcel from Evelyn to Dorothy. In the letter the girl wrote:—
I am going to stay here at Branton for two or three more days. That is because I do not want to be with you while you are reading the book I have written for you. Two or three days will be enough for the reading. Then I am going back to Wyanoke. I have been over to the hospital camp every morning, so I don’t need to tell you that I am perfectly well.