He reached impetuously toward her with a smothered word of endearment, but she held up a hand.
“Wait! You don’t understand! I—I didn’t care for you. I was tired of being poor and—and of this!” She swept her glance about the bare and silent library. “We used to have money,” she went on, speaking rapidly. “We lived in Ohio then, when father was alive. Then I came east to college. I met Laura there. We were friends almost at once, although she was in the class ahead of me. I never finished, for my father died and left us almost without a cent. I left college and Laura’s father secured me work here. I studied hard and last year they made me librarian. Then mother came east to live here with me. Laura was always kind. When my vacation came I went to visit her there at The Larches. Then you—I met you.”
She paused and dropped her gaze.
“Yes,” he said softly. “And then?”
“You said you had some property and you—you seemed nice and kind. I was so weary of it all. I wanted—oh, you know? I wanted to have money, enough to live decently somewhere else than here in this tomb they call a town. I didn’t care. I set out to make you—like me. I went back there to the pool each day for just that, until——”
“Well? Until?” he urged, smiling across at her.
“That is all,” she answered.
“And it was all absolutely mercenary? You never cared for me?”