“I don't know, Jack.”
“I took you out—and it rests with you whether I shall be sorry I did—sorry wholly on your account, I mean,” he added hastily.
She knew what he meant and she said nothing—she only turned her head away slightly, with her eyes upturned a little toward the leaves that were shaking like her own heart.
“I think I see it all very clearly,” he went on, in a low and perfectly even voice. “You can't be happy over there now—you can't be happy over here now. You've got other wishes, ambitions, dreams, now, and I want you to realize them, and I want to help you to realize them all I can—that's all.”
“Jack!—” she helplessly, protestingly spoke his name in a whisper, but that was all she could do, and he went on:
“It isn't so strange. What is strange is that I—that I didn't foresee it all. But if I had,” he added firmly, “I'd have done it just the same—unless by doing it I've really done you more harm than good.”
“No—no—Jack!”
“I came into your world—you went into mine. What I had grown indifferent about—you grew to care about. You grew sensitive while I was growing callous to certain—” he was about to say “surface things,” but he checked himself—“certain things in life that mean more to a woman than to a man. I would not have married you as you were—I've got to be honest now—at least I thought it necessary that you should be otherwise—and now you have gone beyond me, and now you do not want to marry me as I am. And it is all very natural and very just.” Very slowly her head had dropped until her chin rested hard above the little jewelled cross on her breast.
“You must tell me if I am wrong. You don't love me now—well enough to be happy with me here”—he waved one hand toward the straggling little town below them and then toward the lonely mountains—“I did not know that we would have to live here—but I know it now—” he checked himself, and afterward she recalled the tone of those last words, but then they had no especial significance.
“Am I wrong?” he repeated, and then he said hurriedly, for her face was so piteous—“No, you needn't give yourself the pain of saying it in words. I want you to know that I understand that there is nothing in the world I blame you for—nothing—nothing. If there is any blame at all, it rests on me alone.” She broke toward him with a cry then.