"I don't want to read them to you. I want to give them to you—"
"To read?" She held out her hand.
"Yes, to read, of course, but not now."
The hand was withdrawn, evidently with some distressing consciousness of its precipitancy.
"You said the other night that you would have been glad to know that you had done something for me; and somehow I believe you meant it."
"I did, indeed."
"If you read these things you will know. There's no other way in which I could tell you; for you will see that they are part of what you did for me."
"I don't understand."
"You will, though, when you've read them. That," he said meditatively, "is why I don't want you to read them now." But then it struck him that he had blundered, introducing a passionate personal revelation under the dangerous veil of mystery. He had not meant to say, "What you have done for me was to make me love you," but, "I have done a great thing, and what you did for me was to make me do it." For all that she should know, or he acknowledge, the passion was the means, not the end.
"I don't want to be cryptic, and perhaps I ought to explain a little. I meant that you'll see that they're the best things I've written, and that I should not have written them if it had not been for you. I don't know whether you'll forgive me for writing them, but I think you will. Because you'll understand that I had to."