It was with a visible effort the girl lifted her head and looked at him. “I feel horribly mean, Jake, but I can’t,” she said. “I ought to have made you realize that long ago, but I liked you, and, you see, I didn’t quite know. I thought if I waited a little I might be more sure of what I felt for you!”
“Then,” said the man, a trifle hoarsely, “give me what you can now and I will be patient.”
Hetty turned half way from him and closed one hand. The man was pleasant to look upon, in character and disposition all she could desire, and she had found a curious content in his company. Had that day passed as other days had done, she might have yielded to him, but she had been stirred to the depths of her nature during the last few hours, and Flora Schuyler’s warning had been opportune. She had, as she had told him, a liking for Jackson Cheyne, but that, she saw very clearly now, was insufficient. Destiny had sent Larry Grant, with the associations that clung about him, into the depot.
“No,” she said, with a little tremble in her voice, “it wouldn’t be honest or fair to you. I am not half good enough for you.”
The man smiled somewhat mirthlessly, but his voice was reproachful. “You always speak the truth, Hetty. My dear, knowing what the best of us are, I wonder how I dared to venture to ask you to share your life with me.”
Hetty checked him with a little gesture. “Can’t you understand?” she said. “The girl who sang to you now and then isn’t me. I am selfish, discontented, and shallow, and if you hadn’t heard me sing or play you would never have thought of me. There are people who sing divinely, and are—you see, I have met them with the mask off—just horrible.”
“Hetty,” said Cheyne, “I can’t allow anyone to malign you, even if it’s yourself, and if you have any faults, my dear, I’ll take them with the rest. In fact, I would be glad of one or two. They would only bring you a little nearer to me.”
The girl lifted her hand and silenced him. “Jake,” she said appealingly, “please take your answer and go away. If I could only be fond of you in the right way I would, but I can’t, you see. It is not my fault—it isn’t in me.”
The man recognized the finality in her tone, but, feeling that it was useless, made a last endeavour.
“I’m going away to-morrow,” he said. “You might think differently when I come back again.”