"But—" began Ford, and stopped. "You mean—you won't have me with you, anyhow?" he asked. "What you thought I thought, upstairs—you can't forget that? Is that it?"
She smiled slowly, and he stared at her in dismay. Nothing could have expressed so clearly as that faint smile her immunity from the passion that stirred in him.
"Perhaps it 's that," she answered, always in the same indifferent, low voice. "I 'm not thinking more about it than I can help."
"I didn't think any harm of you," Ford protested earnestly, leaning forward from his perch on the rail and striving to compel her to look at him. "We 've been good friends, and you might have trusted me not to think evil of you. I simply didn't understand—nothing else. You can't seriously be offended because you imagined that I was thinking certain thoughts. It isn't fair."
"I 'm not offended," she answered.
"Hurt, then," he substituted. "Anything you please."
He stepped down from his seat and walked a few paces away, with his hands deeply sunk in his pockets, and then walked back again.
"I say," he said abruptly; "it 's a question of what I think of you, it seems. Let me tell you what I do think."
Margaret turned her face towards him. He was frowning heavily, with an appearance of injury and annoyance. He spoke in curt jets.
"It 's only since I 've known you that I 've really worried over being a lunger," he said. "The Army—I could stand that. But seeing you and talking to you, and knowing I 'd no right to say a word—no right to try and lead things that way, even, for your sake as much as mine—it 's been hard. Because—this is what I do think—it 's seemed to me that you were worth more than everything else. I 'd have given the world to tell you so, and ask you—well, you know what I mean."