“I don't know,” says Maurice. “Why?”
“I think you must have thought so, because—it's not vanity, dear—you would not else have been so kind, and gentle, and devoted.”
“Nonsense, Poppet,” he said, with his eyes resolutely averted.
“No, but you have been, and I am very pettish, sometimes. Papa has spoiled me. You are always affectionate, and those worrying ways of yours, which I get angry at, all come from love for me, don't they?”
“I hope so,” said Maurice, with an unwonted moisture in his eyes.
“Well, you see, that is the reason why I am angry with myself for not loving you as I ought. I want you to like the things I like, and to love the books and the music and the pictures and the—the World I love; and I forget that you are a man, you know, and I am only a girl; and I forget how nobly you behaved, Maurice, and how unselfishly you risked your life for mine. Why, what is the matter, dear?”
He had put her away from him suddenly, and gone to the window, gazing across the sloping garden at the bay below, sleeping in the soft evening light. The schooner which had brought the witnesses from Port Arthur lay off the shore, and the yellow flag at her mast fluttered gently in the cool evening breeze. The sight of this flag appeared to anger him, for, as his eyes fell on it, he uttered an impatient exclamation, and turned round again.
“Maurice!” she cried, “I have wounded you!”
“No, no. It is nothing,” said he, with the air of a man surprised in a moment of weakness. “I—I did not like to hear you talk in this way—about not loving me.”
“Oh, forgive me, dear; I did not mean to hurt you. It is my silly way of saying more than I mean. How could I do otherwise than love you—after all you have done?”