“I—I—don’t—oh, Jerry, don’t question me this way. It’s not fair.”
“But he has asked you?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve refused him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I haven’t got that sort of feeling for him. I admire him. I respect him above all men. I can’t tell you how much he was to me, how I leaned on him, depended on him, but—”
She stopped, looking down. Jerry, holding the reins in his loosely gloved hand, leaning toward her, and into her ear whispered:
“But you don’t love him.”
He turned back to the horse with his face alight with triumph. The relief that she was still his, that love of him had made her refuse such an offer, intoxicated him. He could have sung and shouted. He was silent, however, his eyes on the horse, conscious in every fiber of the proximity of the woman who, he now knew, had not the power to break from his influence.