"I don't. I like people. Perhaps if I only knew one sort I would get tired of them. I used to think my people were those I was born among, but I'm beginning to glimpse a little that my family is much larger than I thought, and that all people are my people. Still—" I laughed and drew in a deep breath of pine-scented air.
"Still—?" Selwyn waited.
"It is nice to get away from everybody now and then, and be with just you. I mean—" Certainly I had not meant to say what I had said, and, provoked at my thoughtless revealing, at the chance it would give Selwyn to say what I did not want him to say, I stopped abruptly, then quickly spoke again. "Why don't you make the horse go faster? We'll never get to Signal Hill at this rate. He's crawling."
"What difference does it make whether we get anywhere or not? I don't want to get anywhere. To be going with you is enough. You are a cruel person, Danny, or you would not make me go so long a way alone."
"I am not making you go alone. It is you who are making me. I am much more alone than you." Again I stopped and stared ahead. What was the matter with me that I should be saying things I must not say? In the silence of earth and air I wondered if Selwyn could hear the quick, thick beating of my heart.
On the winding road no one was in sight, and from our elevation a view of the tiny town below could be glimpsed through the bare branches of the trees of the little mountain we were ascending; and about us was no sound save the crunch of the buggy-wheels on the gravel road, and the tread of the slow-moving horse. It was a new world we were in—a kindly, simple, strifeless world of peace and plenty, and calm and content, and the crowded quarters close to Scarborough Square, with their poignant problems of sin and suffering, of scant beauty and weary joy, seemed a life apart and very far away. And the world of the Avenue, the world of handsome homes and deadening luxuries, of social exactions and selfish indulgence, of much waste and unused power, seemed also far away, and just Selwyn and I were together in a little world of our own.
"We might as well have this out, Danny." An arm on the back of the buggy, Selwyn looked at me, and in his eyes was that which made me understand he was right. We might as well have it out. "For three years you have refused to marry me, and now you say you are more alone than I. We've been beating the air, been evading something; refusing to face the thing that is keeping us apart. What is it? You know my love for you. But yours for me— You have never told me that you loved me. Look at me, Danny." He turned my face toward him. "Tell me. Is it because you do not love me that you will not marry me?"
"No." A bird on a bough ahead of us piped to another across the road, and as mate to mate was answered. "It is not because I do not love you—Selwyn. I do—love you." The crushing of my hands hurt, but he said nothing. "I shall never marry unless I marry you—but I am not sure—we should be happy."
"Why not? Is there anything that man could do I would not do to make you happy? All that I am or may be, all that I have to give—and of love I have much—is for you. What is it, then, you fear? Your freedom? I should never interfere with that."
I shook my head. "It is not my freedom. What I fear is our lack of sympathy with, our lack of understanding of, certain points of view. We look at life so differently."