"That's all," he said.
"Nothing about me?" she said, archly smiling and wistful, affecting a great surprise.
Ralph, avoiding her eye, shook his head. It was the truth. He could not bare his heart concerning Nahnya, even to the discreet little book.
"Why do you write it?" Nahnya asked.
"Oh, when you take a bully trip you like to have a record of it—to read when you are old, I suppose."
"When you are old I think you will laugh at this," Nahnya said, looking away.
"Think so?" said Ralph.
Half-measures were impossible to Nahnya. When she was on her guard a wall was no stonier; when she gave her confidence she gave it all. To-day her eyes were as open and affectionate as a child's; there was gratitude in their wistful depths, a hint of humility. This in the same girl who had beaten Ralph about the head only the day before!
Ralph, without altogether understanding the change in her, was touched and thrilled by her look. Alas! for his good resolutions. It had been easy the night before under stress of emotion to swear he would never touch her, never alarm her by his passion. He dimly understood that it was her reliance on his promise that made her so free with him to-day, and yet—his arms ached for her a hundred times more than before, and when in the business about camp they accidentally touched each other, the same old unregenerate madness made his brain reel.
Tossed between two thoughts, he was happy and he was miserable. "She does care! She couldn't look at me like that if she didn't! No! She only looks like that because she feels safe from my love-making!"