“Excuse my saying that in the mean time I must doubt of it.”
“You make me very unhappy,” said Isabel.
“I’m not sorry for that; it may help you to know how I feel. Will you kindly answer me a question?” Isabel made no audible assent, but he apparently saw in her eyes something that gave him courage to go on. “Do you prefer some one else?”
“That’s a question I’d rather not answer.”
“Ah, you do then!” her suitor murmured with bitterness.
The bitterness touched her, and she cried out: “You’re mistaken! I don’t.”
He sat down on a bench, unceremoniously, doggedly, like a man in trouble; leaning his elbows on his knees and staring at the floor. “I can’t even be glad of that,” he said at last, throwing himself back against the wall; “for that would be an excuse.”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “An excuse? Must I excuse myself?”
He paid, however, no answer to the question. Another idea had come into his head. “Is it my political opinions? Do you think I go too far?”
“I can’t object to your political opinions, because I don’t understand them.”