“You are very good,” murmured Blanche, really touched, “but—”
“Don’t say ‘but’ just yet; let me finish,” he went on. “I am leaving England almost immediately, for two months at least. I won’t ask to see you again till I come back. I won’t say anything if you feel that you must stay on here in the meantime, though I would give worlds to see you back in your own home. If you will only agree to think it over, to try to get accustomed to the idea? That is all I ask just now.”
Blanche stopped short. They had been walking on slowly.
“Please don’t say any more,” she said. “Mr Dunstan, I can’t agree to anything, I don’t care for you—I mean, I don’t love you in the very least. I never dreamt of your having thought of me in any way. You must see, under the circumstances, it would be perfectly impossible for me to say I would try to get to care for you, except as a friend. Your very goodness and kindness make it impossible. I do thank you most heartily for what you have said about us all I am not proud in some ways. If—if I loved anybody, it would not be painful to me to accept whatever he was able to do for those I love. But you wouldn’t have me try to care for you because of that?”
“It might come to be for myself,” said Archie. “Certainly, I agree with you that nothing I could possibly do would deserve such a reward.”
“I don’t mean that,” said Blanche. “I could never disassociate the two. I should always feel that pity and sympathy had made you imagine your own feelings deeper than they were.”
“No, no,” he almost interrupted. “It was long before I knew of all this. It is hard upon me that you will not even give me the chance, which you might have done had circumstances been otherwise.”
Blanche shook her head.
“I want to be quite fair,” she said. “Honestly, I can’t imagine myself ever caring for you in that way, putting all secondary feelings out of consideration.”
“You are so young,” he said, “you can’t judge.”