“Isn’t the maidenhair fern lovely?” she said, and looked at me with eyes that said, “Now.”
“Nettie,” I began, “I was a fool to write to you as I did.”
She startled me by the assent that flashed out upon her face. But she said nothing, and stood waiting.
“Nettie,” I plunged, “I can’t do without you. I—I love you.”
“If you loved me,” she said trimly, watching the white fingers she plunged among the green branches of a selaginella, “could you write the things you do to me?”
“I don’t mean them,” I said. “At least not always.”
I thought really they were very good letters, and that Nettie was stupid to think otherwise, but I was for the moment clearly aware of the impossibility of conveying that to her.
“You wrote them.”
“But then I tramp seventeen miles to say I don’t mean them.”
“Yes. But perhaps you do.”