"Stop loving me?" Norval repeated the words slowly.
"Yes, I was beginning to love you very much, more than everything else. Then, when you looked as you did yesterday, I remembered and all night I was afraid. Oh! I am glad you did not get to loving me. It hurts so!"
"How do you know that I have not got to loving you? How do you know but that it was because I love you that I looked as I did yesterday?"
"Ah, no, Mr. Richard Alton, you couldn't have looked so had you loved me." Donelle tried to smile and made a pitiful showing.
"You don't know men, Donelle."
"But I know love."
Now that she had taken her last leave of it, Donelle could talk of it as little Sister Mary might have done, for she had vowed beside the cross to go back to St. Michael's. Long ago Sister Angela had said that she would find peace there. Then she spoke suddenly to Norval.
"You see, maybe you have heard something about Mamsey and me, but you did not quite understand and you felt you had a right to look as you did. I wonder why men want to make it harder for—for women, when women try to forget?"
Norval winced; the shaft had sunk into its rightful place.
And still the white-faced girl stood her distance, and tried to smile.