“It was no fancy! I did love you. I was honest with you, and I have waited patiently, while you have grown more and more distant until now—”
“Now we had better end it all, Max. I could not make you happy, for I am not happy myself.”
“Perhaps I—”
“No, you can not help me; and it is not your fault. You have been good to me—very good; but I can’t marry any one.”
“No one?” he asked, looking at her doubtfully. “’Tana, sometimes I have fancied you might have cared for some one else—some one before you met me.”
“No, I cared for no one before I met you,” she answered, slowly. “But I could not be happy in the social life of your people here. They are charming, but I am not suited to their life. And—and I can’t go back to the hills. So, in a month, I am going to Italy.”
“You have it all decided, then?”
“All—don’t be angry, Max. You will thank me for it some day, though I know our friends will think badly of me just now.”
“No, they shall not; you are breaking no promises. You took me only on trial, and it seems I don’t suit,” 322 he said, with a grimace. “I will see that you are not blamed. And so long as you do not leave America, I should like you to remain here. Don’t let anything be changed in our friendship, ’Tana.”
She turned to him with tears in her eyes, and held out her hand.