"I don't know whether this man is more a beast or a devil; but I know that he is not fit to live, and I wish I—"
Vesta looked up at him in surprise. His face was crimson; his angry eyes looked beyond her, above her, anywhere except at her.
"I don't know what you mean!" she said. "He was neither. He was kind, oh, very kind. He did it as tenderly as possible. I shall always be grateful—" the quiver came again, and she stopped.
"Oh!" cried Geoffrey. He drove his paddle savagely into the water, and the canoe leaped forward. What were women made of? why, why must he be subjected to this?
The silence that followed was almost worse than the speech. Finally he stole a glance at his companion, and saw her face still faintly rosy—it must be mostly the light—and set in a sadness that had no touch of resentment in it.
"Perhaps you don't like my talking about it," she said, after awhile.
Geoffrey uttered an inarticulate murmur, but found no words.
"The aunties don't. Aunt Phoebe gets angry, and Aunt Vesta tearful and embarrassed. But—well, I could not stay at home. Everything there reminded me—I thought if I came here, where no such ideas ever entered, I might begin—not to forget, but to resign myself a little, after a time. But—I found you here. No, let me speak!" She raised her hand, as Geoffrey tried to interrupt.
"I have to make you understand—if I can—why I was rude and odious and ungrateful when I first came, for I was all those things, and I am not naturally so, I truly don't think I am. But, don't you see?—to come right upon some one who was having all that I had lost, enjoying all I had hoped to enjoy, and caring—well, perhaps as much as I cared, but still in a different way, a man's way, taking it all as a matter of course, where I would have taken it on my knees—"
"You must let me speak now, Miss Blyth," said Geoffrey Strong. He spoke loud and quickly, to drown the noise in his ears.