"I don't like it," the girl said, quite as if she had not heard him, "I don't like anything about it! I wish—Oh, Rufus, can't we go on to-night? Or go somewhere and talk things over and make other plans. I don't want any room!"
He spoke kindly but with great firmness.
"That is impossible, dear, as you will realize when you think a moment. All the arrangements are made, and my friend is waiting and will be there for the next train. There is no other train until morning that will do us any good. Why can you not be the sensible girl you have been all the afternoon and let me do the extra planning that this detention has made necessary? I assure you I can take care of you." As he spoke, he tried to draw her nearer.
She made a despairing movement away from him and said:
"Oh, I cannot make you understand! I know how strange it seems to you, but if you could think for a moment of my side of it! Can't you realize how different it will all be to me when I have the right to be with you anywhere and always? As it is, I cannot help feeling strangely alone and—and almost disgraced! I do, Rufus, I cannot help it. Mother has always been so particular about me; and she would think this that we are doing was terrible! I know now that she would. Can't we go somewhere on the cars, and talk it all over? I don't feel so perfectly strange when we are moving. Hark! Was that one o'clock? And we were to have been there long before twelve! And you were to telegraph to mother early in the morning! Oh, this is dreadful!"
He bent toward her and spoke gently. "Daisy, listen, you are making yourself ill over troubles that do not exist. Everything is all right; we shall be in by noon, and my friend will meet the train. Meantime in the early morning I will wire your mother, as we planned; and—"
She interrupted him. "But we don't get in until noon! And what you were going to say won't be true!"
"Oh, nonsense! Why, my dear, if you were not so tired as to be beyond reasoning, I could convince you in a very few minutes of the folly of that! I shall only be anticipating the truth by a very few hours in order to relieve her anxiety."
"Rufus, I cannot help it. I cannot have our life together begin with falsehood! It is bad enough as it is. I cannot help being sorry that we did not wait until mother had a chance to know you better. She is not a hard or unreasonable woman."
"I see plainly that you do not trust me." He spoke with such bitterness and sharpness that the listener on the couch who could catch only portions of the girl's words, felt as though she would like to spring up that minute and defend her. But the voice rose clearer just then.