"Oh, no, certainly not," she stammered, not knowing how to truthfully refute his implied charge.
There was that look of distress in her eyes that filled him with compunction. When they reached the other side he stood and looked down at her with the old feeling that, somehow, he was all in the wrong, and she entirely right.
"Won't you tell me what I have done to offend you?" he asked abruptly.
A deeper rose color came to her cheeks. This was just the question she was dreading. "I—I—nothing," she stammered incoherently.
"Then won't you tell me why you treat me so?" His indignation had vanished; his tone was very humble. "I cannot help seeing that you have changed, and I have done nothing, I could do nothing, wittingly, to hurt you."
"You have not done anything to offend me," she said in a low tone, with a slight accent on the pronoun.
"Then what has changed you? We are not good friends any more?" His voice was inquiring.
She would have given much to contradict him, but her nature was essentially honest, and she breathed the low answer, "No."
"I feared it, I knew it; but don't you think you might, at least, tell me the reason?" He was surprised at his own meekness.
The girl looked down into the murmuring, brown Water. Something arose in her throat and threatened to choke her. If he would only not be so humble. If he were haughty and indignant, her task would be much easier. And then, might she not be wrong? Oh, if he would only tell her she was mistaken! She struggled for some words by which she might avoid telling him the truth, but she was a country-bred girl, all unused to the small equivocations of social usage, and the uncompromising integrity of her nature forbade trifling.