"Would you like a little time to think it over?" he asked heavily.
She was irrationally angry at him. What right had he to think she needed time to think it over? Why hadn't he the decency to be deceived by her behavior? Then she stole another look at him, with all the gaiety and youth gone out of his face, and made up her mind that the anger ought to be on his side. But it apparently was not.
"Oh, please don't mind!" she begged him, abandoning some of her defenses. "It's true, I do feel a little strange, but I'm sure it will all come straight if—if I wait a little. You see, you were gone so long."
"Yes. I worried a lot about it on shipboard," he answered her directly. His face did not lighten, but there was a sort of relief in his tone, as if actually knowing the truth was better than being fenced with. "I thought to myself—'I hurried her into it so. I wonder if she really will care when I come back.' It was such a long time. But then your letters were so sweet and loving, and I cared such a lot——"
His voice broke. He had been talking on a carefully emotionless dead level, but now he suddenly stopped as if he had come to the end of his control. But he was only silent a moment, and went on:
"I cared so much that I thought you must. That's a queer thing, isn't it? You've known all your life that other people think if they care enough the other person will care, and you know they're idiots. And then your time comes, and you go and are the same old idiot yourself. . . . Queer. Well, I'm sorry, Marjorie. Shall I go now? We can think about what we'd better do next time we talk it over."
"Oh, please, please!" begged Marjorie. "Oh, Francis, I feel like a dog—a miserable, little coward-dog. And—and I don't know why you're making all this up. I—I haven't said anything like what——"
He put his arm around her, not in the least as if he were her lover.
It only felt protecting, not like a man's touch.
"I would be glad to think you cared for me. But I am almost sure you don't. Everything you have said, and every one of your actions since we came in, have seemed to me as if you didn't. It isn't your fault, poor little thing. It's mine for hurrying you into it. . . . Marjorie, Marjorie—do you?"
There was an intense entreaty in his tone. But she knew that only the truth would do.