The innocence of the plea for love without marriage struck her with a dull humor that faded into annoyance that she should see the humor. It was an uncomfortable sensation, and she hated discomfort; in her desire to escape from it, she spoke with quick impatience. "No, Sam, of course not,—not the way you want me to. Why, you are just a boy, you know!" she added, lightly.
But Sam threw himself on his knees beside her, and pressed his head against her skirts. "Oh, are you sure, Mrs. Richie? Why, it seems to me you might—just a little? Can't you? You see, I'm so lonely," he ended pitifully. His innocent solemn eyes were limpid with tears, and he looked at her with terrified beseeching, like a lost child.
The tears that sprang to her eyes were almost motherly; for an impetuous instant she bent over him, then drew back sharply, and the tears dried in a hot pang of shame. "No, Sam; I can't. Oh, I am so sorry! Please forgive me—I ought not to have let you—but I didn't know—yes; I did know! And I ought to have stopped you. It's my fault. Oh, how selfish I have been! But it's horrible to have you talk this way! Won't you please not say anything more?" She was incoherent to the point of crying.
Sam looked out over the dark garden in silence. "Well," he said slowly, "if you can't, then I don't want to see you. It would hurt me too much to see you. I'll go away. I will go on loving you, but I will go away, so that I needn't see you. Yes; I will leave Old Chester—"
"Oh, I wish you would," she said.
"You don't love me," he repeated, in a sort of hopeless astonishment; "why, I can't seem to believe it! I thought you must—I love you so. But no, you don't. Not even just a little. Well—"
And without another word he left her. She could not hear his step on the locust flowers on the porch.
CHAPTER XVII
"I wish your confounded Old Chester people would mind their own affairs! This prying into things that are none of their business is—"
Lloyd Pryor stopped; read over what he had written, and ground his teeth. No; he couldn't send her such a letter. It would call down a storm of reproach and anger and love. And, after all, it wasn't her fault; this doctor fellow had said that she did not know of his call. Still, if she hadn't been friendly with those people, the man wouldn't have thought of "looking him up"! Then he remembered that he had been the one to be friendly with the "doctor fellow"; and that made him angry again. But his next letter was more reasonable, and so more deadly.