"One May morning on the Kajiar road! I knew then that I must have cared always, without guessing it. But your coolness roused my pride; and I vowed that if you had wiped me out of your heart, I would die sooner than let you suspect my discovery. Yet all the while I longed for you to know it; and in the end, goaded by your blindness, and your astonishing want of conceit, I break my pride into a hundred little bits. Ai-je été assez femme?" she concluded with a whimsical smile.
One of her hands lay on the grass beside him. He covered it with his own.
"And was the amazing discovery responsible for the Garth episode?" His tone had a hint of anxiety.
"For the latter part of it, yes; though we have been friends all the winter. He is at least moderately intelligent; and an intelligent egoist is always interesting. Besides, companionship is the breath of life to me, you understand; and I seldom manage to make friends with women."
"The other kind of friendship is an edged tool."
"And therefore irresistible! It's like fencing with the buttons off the foils."
"You speak from much practical experience?"
"Yes. I have had my share of it. But please believe me, Eldred,"—she hesitated,—"I have been as loyal to you in word and deed, all these years, as if I had borne your name, and lived under your roof. In spite of my weakness for edged tools, I have never let any man tell me that he loved me since you told me so yourself, in the dark ages. And if a few have wanted to do so, I could hardly help that, could I?"
"No more than you could help breathing or sleeping," he answered with a slow strong pressure of her hand.
"I know I ought not to have let Major Garth see so much of me after I saw how it was with him, but—since it's the whole truth to-night—I confess your aloofness hurt me so, that I wanted to see if I could rouse you to a spark of feeling by hurting you back, and I chose the weapon readiest to my hand."