“Why won't you tell me, Edith, just where you are?”
The sound of her name was somewhat unfamiliar to their discourse. The intonation which his voice gave to it now caused her to look up quickly.
“If I could tell myself,” she answered him, after an instant's thought, “pray believe that I would tell you.”
The way seemed for the moment blocked before him, and he sighed heavily. “I want to get nearer to you,” he said, with gloom, “and I don't!”
It occurred to her to remark: “You take exception to my phraseology when I say you always try to be 'nice,' but I'm sure you know what I mean.” She offered him this assurance with a tentative smile, into which he gazed moodily.
“You didn't think I was 'nice' when you consented to marry me,” he was suddenly inspired to say. “I can't imagine your applying that word to me then in your mind. God knows what it was you did say to yourself about me, but you never said I was 'nice.' That was the last word that would have fitted me then—and now it's the only one you can think of.” The hint that somehow he had stumbled upon a clue to the mysteries enveloping him rose to prominence in his mind as he spoke. The year had wrought a baffling difference in him. He lacked something now that then he had possessed, but he was powerless to define it.
He seated himself again in the chair, and put his hand through her arm to keep her where she lightly rested beside him. “Will you tell me,” he said, with a kind of sombre gentleness, “what the word is that you would have used then? I know you wouldn't—couldn't—have called me 'nice.' What would you have called me?”
She paused in silence for a little, then slipped from the chair and stood erect, still leaving her wrist within the restraining curve of his fingers. “I suppose,” she said, musingly—“I suppose I should have said 'powerful' or 'strong.'” Then she released her arm, and in turn moved to the parapet.
“And I am weak now—I am 'nice,'” he reflected, mechanically.
In the profile he saw, as she looked away at the vast distant horizon, there was something pensive, even sad. She did not speak at once, and as he gazed at her more narrowly it seemed as if her lips were quivering. A new sense of her great beauty came to him—and with it a hint that for the instant at least her guard was down. He sprang to his feet, and stood beside her.