“Inga, is there any one else—is that it?” he blurted out.
The suddenness of the question staggered her. She drew back, but recovered herself almost immediately.
“I have told you my true reason,” she said, in a low voice.
“You have not answered. I have a right to know the truth. There is some one else,” he insisted.
“You see, this is just it,” she said solemnly, “you think you have the right to know everything about me. That’s what I don’t admit—any such right, either over what has passed or what is coming.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said nervously. “I don’t care what has been. Good Lord, I’m not asking more of you than I do of myself, but——”
“But you must know,” she said, looking at him with her sea-blue eyes, that in moments of tense emotion seemed to widen and darken.
“Yes; I must know,” he said, exasperated. “I must know something about you!”
“You mean everything—everything I have done,” she said, shaking her head, “every thought, all that surrounds me and makes me feel that something is hidden from the rest of the world. Oh, Mr. Dan, if I changed like that, if I were like every one else, you wouldn’t care for me—I know it, I know it! Mr. Dan, isn’t it enough what I’m willing to give you? Let me be as I am.”
He did by instinct, at last, the thing he should have done at first. He turned with a smothered exclamation and caught her in his arms, crying hotly: