"I was on my honour," she answered, equally low. Then, gathering force as he still stood with averted face, "I gave you my word to submit to anything, if you let me go to Pansy. She doesn't need me any more, so I am here." She waited a moment, but still he did not speak. "I am well and strong now," she persisted bravely. "I can do anything that you wish. What are you going to do with me?"
"There's only one thing I can do with you," came the answer. "I can't let you go."
She stood immovably, her eyes fixed upon him. The dread lest he was not perfectly sane once more assailed her. Her mother had spoken of him as a monomaniac. Perhaps she feared him more at that moment than ever previously.
When he turned abruptly, with his characteristic jerk, she started and shrank only too visibly.
"Explain," he said. "Sit down in this chair—you look as white as a sheet—and explain. You tell me you are well and strong. Your mother in a letter which I got last Saturday morning told me you were seriously ill. Ferris, whom I met to-day in town, said that the doctor would not let you get up. There is some discrepancy here."
Her eyes filled with tears. "I know," she said. "May I tell you about it?"
"Certainly."
He had seated her in the old wooden writing-chair from which he had risen. He fetched another for himself, and placed it near. The lamp fell upon her burnished hair and upon his strained face as he raised it to her. It struck her that he was very different from her memory of him. His eyes had surely grown larger, his face thinner. His close-cut hair changed his appearance. He wore other, nicer clothes than those in which she was accustomed to see him; but chiefly he looked younger, less assured. There was something almost wistful in his expression.
She gave a swift, appraising glance, and lowered her eyes to the table. In her nervousness she would have liked to take up a paper knife and play with it. Some deep instinct told her to be simple and perfectly straightforward. She let her hands lie in her lap.
"Mamma," she began, "did not want me to come back. I—I suppose she told you of the vexatious motor accident, which obliged Mr. Rosenberg and me to stop the night in a horrid little wayside inn?"