“You are so dear,” she whispered; “you are so wonderful!”
“Have you missed me; have you really thought of me?” he asked. “Do I really mean something to you?”
“Not something, but everything!”
There was a sob in her throat. She clung to him, laying her cheek to his face, calling him by endearing names that were new to her lips. “Sometimes I doubted you, dear. When I didn’t hear from you I thought you’d forgotten; and it hurt me so!”
“I understand how that would be,” he said tenderly. “I’d have let you know if there’d been any way. I was afraid to ask my friends to telegraph; it would have involved explanations.”
“I only want your forgiveness. I’ll never doubt you again, dear!”
“We must have faith in each other; we must trust each other,” he said. “You know I’d trust you round the world.”
She clasped her arms about his neck and held him in a long kiss to seal his faith in her. As they went on she told him about Bob Cummings and the visit to McGovern’s.
“It was to give myself a chance to forget you. I wanted to see if I could forget you. All that day I had thought of you so steadily that I was unhappy. I hated the thought of going home and sitting in my room and thinking of you. Can you understand how that would be?”
As she began the story in a tone that was half self-accusation, half apology, he teasingly pretended to make something tragic of it, but when he saw that it was a matter of conscience with her to confess he hastened to make it easy for her. Assured that he saw in the episode no disloyalty she gave every humorous twist to the incident. He laughed till the woods rang when she described the manner in which she had slipped away from Cummings and taken the trolley home.