"Thank you for telling me. I'm glad I know. It hurts me, though—right here." She put her hand to her heart.
"Indiana!"
"Now I'm blue, but I'll get over it. To think I could hurt you, or anybody, like that."
"Oh, Indy, don't think about it. This scar is healed—long ago. You've hurt me here, far worse than that." He took her hand and pressed it to his heart. "There's a wound here it'll take many a long day to heal."
"Oh, Glen! Oh, Glen!" she moaned, piteously, trying to wrest her hand away. But he held it tightly over his heart.
"I don't know what you want—I don't believe you know yourself—I don't believe you realize what you're doing—you're too young to know. You're throwing away a rare, pure love, Indiana, as though it were a soiled ribbon. I'm not a man of the world, but I know what that means in life—you don't. It's all that counts in the long run. I don't say another man couldn't love you, but no one will ever love you better—remember that, won't you? And that mine is not a love which has sprung up suddenly—it has taken deep roots in my life."
"It's horrible to think I could hurt anyone like that," repeated Indiana, mechanically, looking at the scar on his forehead.
"That's the least. Think of the wound here," he repeated. "You could heal it, Indiana." He opened his arms. He might have won her by his very insistence, if it were not that the idea of another—a different life from what she had known—had shed its glamour upon her, the glamour of the new and strange. She would not trust herself to look at his dark, quivering face, but turned away and mounted the stairs, slowly, to her room, seeing him very clearly as she went, standing with his arms extended.
Later, Mrs. Stillwater found Glen sitting alone on the balcony, looking vacantly on the lake. He did not notice her, until she went up to him, putting her arm about his neck.
"What's the matter, Glen?"