She glanced up at him penitently after his last speech, and marked the cessation of her involuntary resentment by slipping back into his arm. He was emboldened to make a query which had been on his tongue a dozen times, but which, up to that hour, not even the proprietary sense of the husband had enabled him to regard as discreet.
“Charlotte, am I really the first man you ever cared about?”
“Absolutely the first to whom I ever gave a sentimental thought.”
The delighted recipient of this compliment did not, in the joy of hearing it, examine it too closely. When he did begin to speak, his wife was pleased to note that he was less inclined to investigate the cause of the phenomenon than to speculate upon its uncommonness.
“I don’t know what you were about,” he said. “It’s mighty good luck for me, but—not in an uncomplimentary sense—you must have been an awful goose.”
“That’s it exactly. I was an awful goose; and, being so, I had an inspiration to keep out of love.”
“Why so?”
“Because I was afraid of being in love. Can you understand that? Because love was altogether associated in my mind with pain—the pain of losing, and the pain of loving and of not being loved, and of being generally misunderstood.”
“And all that because you were raised an orphan. I don’t think you had a fair show, old girl.”
“I know I had not,” said Mrs. Collingwood decisively. She added, “But I had rather not talk about it. It makes me morbid.”