“For what?” she said. “What’s there to blame anybody for? What has happened all of a sudden?”
He came closer to her and looked her steadily in the eye.
“I am not free,” he said in the lowest audible voice. “I can’t marry you. I am not free.”
She repeated with trembling lips,
“Not free! Why not?”
“No. If I were—oh, June, if I were!” He turned away as if to go, then turned back, and said,
“Oh, June, if I were, we would be so happy! If I could undo the past and take you—!”
His voice broke and he looked down, biting his underlip. She understood everything now, and for the moment speech was impossible. There was a slight pause, and then he said,
“I wouldn’t let myself see the way it was going. I lied to myself. I loved you better every day, and I persuaded myself I didn’t, and that it was nothing but a friendship to both of us. We mustn’t meet this way any more. But we will see each other sometimes at people’s houses? We’re not to be strangers.”
She turned dazedly away from him to go to the house. For a step or two he let her go. Then he followed her, caught her hand with its bunch of limp flowers, and said with urgent desperation: