The street was empty. They were pacing it slowly, up and down.
“I’ve always been a coward,” he continued. “I fell in love with you the first day I met you on the stairs. But I dared not tell you.”
“You didn’t give me that impression,” answered Joan.
She had always found it difficult to know when to take him seriously and when not.
“I was so afraid you would find it out,” he explained.
“You thought I would take advantage of it,” she suggested.
“One can never be sure of a woman,” he answered. “And it would have been so difficult. There was a girl down in Scotland, one of the village girls. It wasn’t anything really. We had just been children together. But they all thought I had gone away to make my fortune so as to come back and marry her—even my mother. It would have looked so mean if after getting on I had married a fine London lady. I could never have gone home again.”
“But you haven’t married her—or have you?” asked Joan.
“No,” he answered. “She wrote me a beautiful letter that I shall always keep, begging me to forgive her, and hoping I might be happy. She had married a young farmer, and was going out to Canada. My mother will never allow her name to be mentioned in our house.”
They had reached the end of the street again. Joan held out her hand with a laugh.