She turned as though to sit down and be quit of a disagreeable topic forever, but he drew a step nearer and took her hands.
“Zee,”—and the smile was all gone from his eyes—“there isn’t any such easy escape for you. Your reasons are no reasons. You have said all that there is to say, haven’t you? But you haven’t said that you do not love me. If you will say that I shall go away, and if that is so I must know it now.”
She struggled to free her hands, but he held them tight. She drew away from him, her face very white.
Suddenly she raised her eyes and looked at him.
“You must let me go. I can’t tell you why; but there can be nothing between you and me.”
“I love you, Zee,” he said steadily. “You must let me help you,—if there is any new trouble,—if your father has met some new difficulty—”
“Oh, you don’t understand! It isn’t father—alone—I mean. I can’t tell you—I can’t speak of it—it was my mother—and your father—their unhappy story; but there is a fate in these things! It’s not that I don’t believe in you; it’s because I have grown afraid of happiness! And it is all so strange, that you and I should meet here and that I should have hurt you last summer—maybe—as my mother hurt your father. And that was before I knew their story.”
“We must not think of them and what they did; we must think of ourselves. I know the story of your mother and my father. Your uncle told me, quite recently.”
“Yes; Uncle Rodney knew.”
“And now that is all there is of that and you haven’t alarmed me a particle, Zee.”