“I don’t want to pass for more than I am worth. If I have fallen short of what you expected of me, I don’t blame you for putting me down on the common level with everybody.”
If her sorrow had been his own he could not have felt it more deeply. “Only I am disappointed, that’s all.”
She was distressed to the soul; his sympathy for her had been so courageously beautiful, so exquisitely true, that she could not bear the idea of disappointing him, or allowing him to feel that she underrated his value.
“I don’t know men very well, but I know you are not like the others. Nothing could be very hard to bear, because you are my friend. I welcome the days which bring you to me. You have been my fortification.”
“Then prove it,” the soft answer came back. “I know that something distresses you. Tell me of it, and let me help you.”
“It’s nothing that you could change.”
“How do you know? Let me judge that.”
“No, not now, sometime I will tell you if you can soften things for me.”
Her keen refinement would not let her talk to him of her poverty.