"I don't quite know what to say to you," he resumed patiently, "when you insist on putting thoughts into my head that never were there. I've really wanted to help you—"
"Why?"
The monosyllable brought him up startled and staring. "Why? I hardly know...."
"Didn't you know better?"
"I don't understand you—"
Her eyes were wide and dark to his; all trace of petulance had faded from her manner. "You ought to. You ought to know," she insisted quietly, "that a man like you can't be just kind to a girl like me without.... Oh!" she cried, "I suppose it would've been different if the show had gone out—and everything—but now, with that hope gone—and nothing more to do for you—with no prospects but to lose you—the only friend I've got in the world—!"
Her voice broke at a high pitch, and she fell silent, turning away to stare with swimming eyes down at the table. He saw her trembling violently, her lips quivering. His amazement was extraordinary and bewildering. He heard his voice, as it might have been another's, saying: "Does it really mean so much to you?"
"Oh, can't you see!"
With a little, helpless motion of her hands, she lifted quickly to him a face of flushed and tear-dimmed loveliness. Another man might have been numb to its appeal: to Matthias it proved irresistible, coming sharp upon the shock of comprehending that she offered him her love, herself.
In a stride, hardly knowing what he did, he folded the girl in his arms. She lay therein for an instant as though bewitched by the exquisite wonder of this consummation of her fondest, maddest dreams; then in a breath became a woman reanimate and wild with love, clinging to him with all her strength, in an ecstasy of impassioned tenderness.