“I do not know how.”
“I thought that coming to the point was one of your excellences.”
“Your question—your assertion rather—is something very new.”
She could see the words; she was reciting them from a printed page.
“Don’t you know whether you like me or not?” he asked in the old assured, boyish way.
“No, I do not know that; if I did I should care for what you are saying, and now I do not care. Once, in that time when I loved you and you did not care, I would have died with joy to hear you say what you have said; my heart would have stopped beating; I should have been too glad to live; but perhaps when that you went away and died, the Tessa that loved you went away and died, too. I think that I did die—of shame. Now I hear you speak the words that I used to pray then every night that you might speak to me, and now I do not care! When I was little I cried myself sick once for something I wanted, and when mother gave it to me I was too sick and tired to care. No, I do not want to marry you, Dr. Towne, I am too sick and tired to love you.”
“Why do you not want to marry me?”
“Because—because—” she looked up into his grave eyes—“I do not want to; I am not satisfied with you.”
“Why are you not satisfied with me?”
“I do not know.”