“I liked him at first,” she said; “I thought that he was different. I thought he couldn't really be—”
“Really be what?”
Antonia did not answer.
“I don't know,” she said at last. “I can't explain. I thought—”
Shelton still stood, holding to the branch, and the oscillation of the boat freed an infinity of tiny ripples.
“You thought—what?” he said.
He ought to have seen her face grow younger, more childish, even timid. She said in a voice smooth, round, and young:
“You know, Dick, I do think we ought to try. I know I don't try half hard enough. It does n't do any good to think; when you think, everything seems so mixed, as if there were nothing to lay hold of. I do so hate to feel like that. It is n't as if we didn't know what's right. Sometimes I think, and think, and it 's all no good, only a waste of time, and you feel at the end as if you had been doing wrong.”
Shelton frowned.
“What has n't been through fire's no good,” he said; and, letting go the branch, sat down. Freed from restraint, the boat edged out towards the current. “But what about Ferrand?”