Presently she spoke. "I am going to promise to write to you now and then," she said, "and give you each time an address where you may answer, if you will promise not to come to me. I am going to tell you frankly that I want your letters."
"You want my letters—but not me?"
"You put more of yourself into your letters than any one else I know. So in admitting that I want your letters I admit that I want yourself—as a good friend."
"No more than that?"
"That's quite enough, isn't it, for people who know each other only as we do?"
"It's not enough for me. If it's enough for you, then—well, it's as I thought."
"What did you think?"
He hesitated, then spoke boldly: "No woman really wants—a mangled human being for her own."
Impulsively she laid her hand on his. Instantly he grasped it. "Please," she said, "will you never say—or think—that, again?"
He gazed eagerly into her face, still duskily visible to his scrutiny. "I won't," he answered, "if you'll tell me you care for me. Oh, don't you?—don't you?—not one bit? Just give me a show of a chance and I'll make you care. I've got to make you care. Why, I've thought of nothing but you for months—dreamed of you, sleeping and waking. I can't stop; it's too late. Don't ask me to stop—Anne—dear!"