“Alfred”—she put her hand on his shoulder and looked at his face while she spoke—“you care about me really, don’t you?”
“Why do you ask that now?” he asked severely.
“I don’t know. Mother said once that you had love for nothing but yourself. It isn’t true, is it? Sometimes I think I would have done better if I had married Albert Spark. I believe he’s fonder of me now than you are.”
He looked impatient and at a loss what to do. He could not understand unselfish love; self-protection was his own strongest feeling; everything else was merely a means, a weapon to be used in attaining it.
“You mustn’t keep me in the rain,” he said; “the old woman will be back by this time. Why do you think I don’t care for you?”
“I don’t know,” and as she spoke the tears came into her eyes; “I think it was because you just let me go in the rain and didn’t see that I’d get wet through. It doesn’t matter, but I’d like you to have seen it.”
“You are stronger than I am. It is dangerous for me to get wet: I came out in the rain to meet you.”
“And then, perhaps I oughtn’t to say it, but you took the money and didn’t offer me a shilling to keep for myself.”
“I didn’t know you wanted it. You can’t expect me to go without anything in my pocket?”
“No,” and she burst into tears; “it’s only sometimes I get dissatisfied,” she added apologetically.