He knew she was going to tell him what troubled her. For an instant he was filled with terror lest she say she could not love him after all. Perhaps his fight with Philip had sickened her, killed her love. Tense and fearful, he waited.
"Go on, Claire. I have noticed something."
"It isn't that I don't love you," she cried, seeing his fear in his drawn face. "Oh, I do love you!"
He laughed with relief.
"Then speak away. Nothing else in the world can frighten me."
"I'm afraid that it will displease you."
"Not if it is something real to you."
"Well then—oh, it seems so hard to explain. I—I am finding myself out."
"That ought to be pleasant."
"Yes, it is—yet, I don't know—you see, back there in the wilderness I thought nothing mattered but you. It was so hard and uncertain. The future was so far off. But now it's different. Every day I have neared civilization I have grown less sure that our way is the right way."