“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
John nodded and looked away. He wanted to say something, but the right words would not come; he could only smile. It came to him with a shock that he had allowed himself to hope too much; that, despite pretense of reckoning with possible disappointment, he had not, in reality, considered it. The sunlit world suddenly looked sickeningly blank. Perhaps Margaret read something of all this in his expression. When she spoke again her voice held pain and regret.
“There’s so much I’d like to say,” she murmured. “But—I don’t know how. I wish—I want you to believe that I am sorry, more sorry than I can tell you. And I thank you very, very much for the honour, for it is an honour that a woman may be proud of, Mr. North. Oh, tell me this, please: have I been to blame?”
“To blame! You!”
“I mean have I done anything, said anything to make you think—that I might—care for you?”
“Great heavens, no!” John protested. “It has been all my fault. But, no, not a fault; I won’t call it that. It would have been a fault not to have loved you. I—I’ve made a mistake in telling you, that is all, Miss Ryerson. Please don’t think of it any more; don’t let it trouble you. It—it’ll be all right.”
“Will it?” she asked wistfully. “I hope so, oh, I do hope so! I never thought—if I had suspected for a moment, I would have done something—gone away——”
“It would have been too late,” said John gravely. “You see, the mischief was already done. Phil had your picture in his room; I saw it away last fall. Then he talked of you often; read little bits sometimes from your letters; until I seemed to almost know you. Then your own letter came. Of course it was nothing—but—— Oh, I am such an ass, Miss Ryerson! And then, when I came and saw you that day there at the station—well, it just clinched everything! It was queer; it didn’t seem as though I was meeting you for the first time. You were just what I had pictured you, only a hundred times better, lovelier, sweeter!” He paused, felt absent-mindedly for his pipe and placed it in his mouth. Then he took it out, put it back in his pocket, and went on more lightly.
“I didn’t mean to tell you to-day—perhaps not at all before I went. But I couldn’t bear to let you think I was cad enough to do that as a joke. Perhaps—if I had waited? If I had kept silent until spring or even summer——?”
Margaret shook her head.