When at last they were settled in a corner of the empty tea-room and had given their order, they talked in an embarrassed fashion about their recent letters, both of them carefully quiet and restrained. Finally Hugh shoved his plate and cup aside and looked straight at her for the first time. She was thin, much thinner than she had been a year ago, but there was something sweeter about her, too; she seemed so quiet, so gentle.
"We aren't going to get anywhere this way, Cynthia," he said desperately. "We're both evading. I haven't any sense left, but what I say from now on I am going to say straight out. I swore on the train that I wouldn't kiss you. I knew that I wouldn't be able to think if I did—and I can't; all I know is that I want to kiss you again." He looked at her sitting across the little table from him, so slender and still—a different Cynthia but damnably desirable. "Cynthia," he added hoarsely, "if you took my hand, you could lead me to hell."
She in turn looked at him. He was much older than he had been a year before. Then he had been a boy; now he seemed a man. He had not changed particularly; he was as blond and young and clean as ever, but there was something about his mouth and eyes, something more serious and more stern, that made him seem years older.
"I don't want to lead you to hell, honey," she replied softly. "I left Prom last year so that I wouldn't do that. I told you then that I wasn't good for you—but I'm different now."
"I can see that. I don't know what it is, but you're different, awfully different." He leaned forward suddenly. "Cynthia, shall we go over to Jersey and get married? I understand that one can there right away. We're both of age—"
"Wait, Hugh; wait." Cynthia's hands were tightly clasped in her lap. "Are you sure that you want to? I've been thinking a lot since I got your telegram. Are you sure you love me?"
He slumped back into his chair. "I don't know what love is," he confessed miserably. "I can't find out." Cynthia's hands tightened in her lap. "I've tried to think this business out, and I can't. I haven't any right to ask you to marry me. I haven't any money, not a bit, and I'm not prepared to do anything, either. As I wrote you, my folks want me to go to Harvard next year." The mention of his poverty and of his inability to support a wife brought him back to something approaching normal again. "I suppose I'm just a kid, Cynthia," he added more quietly, "but sometimes I feel a thousand years old. I do right now."
"What were your plans for next year and after that until you saw me?" Her eyes searched his.
"Oh, I thought I'd go to Harvard a year or two and then try to write or perhaps teach. Writing is slow business, I understand, and teaching doesn't pay anything. I don't want to ask my father to support us, and I won't let your folks. I lost my head when I suggested that we get married. It would be foolish. I haven't the right."
"No," she agreed slowly; "no, neither of us has the right. I thought before you came if you asked me to marry you—I was sure somehow that you would—I would run right off and do it, but now I know that I won't." She continued to gaze at him, her eyes troubled and confused. What made him seem so much older, so different?