Her eyes fell upon her hands clasped in her lap, and her cheeks grew pale.
"My father," she half whispered.
"He kept them from you?"
"It must have been so."
Fairchilds looked very grave. He did not speak at once.
"How can you forgive such things?" he presently asked. "One tenth of the things you have had to bear would have made an incarnate fiend of me!"
She kept her eyes downcast and did not answer.
"I can't tell you," he went on, "how bitterly disappointed I was when I didn't hear from you. I couldn't understand why you didn't write. And it gave me a sense of disappointment in YOU. I thought I must have overestimated the worth of our friendship in your eyes. I see now—and indeed in my heart I always knew—that I did you injustice."
She did not look up, but her bosom rose and fell in long breaths.
"There has not been a day," he said, "that I have not thought of you, and wished I knew all about you and could see you and speak with you—Tillie, what a haunting little personality you are!"