She sat opposite him and, for fully a minute, while with galloping brain he watched her, she looked through the glass at crowded, shuffling Rivington Street.
"It is simple enough, Wesley," she at last resumed. "Before I can think of renewing anything like my old friendly attitude toward you——"
"Your friendly attitude!"
"It was scarcely more than that. Before I can renew it, there is something that must be explained."
Dyker's own attitude was still that of the average lover, and the average lover cannot see beyond his own shadow.
"Oh,"—he was momentarily relieved and prepared, in consequence, to show a proper magnanimity—"you needn't explain, Marian! I knew you would find that I was right, and that this was no place for you. I appreciate perfectly how you feel: you have been disappointed and disillusioned, and it is like you handsomely to want to confess that you were wrong. But let's merely consider that done, and say no more about it."
He ended in a warmth of good feeling; but the did not seem inclined to accept this proffer, and, as he paused, he wondered what was in her gaze.
"No," she said, "you are not quite correct in your surmise. I have been disappointed and disillusioned. I have been disappointed in one of the people among whom I have been working; but I have been disillusioned in regard to you."
She stopped. He began to guess now what was back of those calm eyes of hers. Disillusioned in regard to him? At the first breath it seemed incredible, but at the next his mind filled with the ghosts of his experience, the grim figures that compose the pageant of that real life of a man, upon which he never raises the curtain for the feminine eyes most dear to him.
"In regard to me?" he echoed. He was wondering, in hidden panic, which especial image had been revealed to her, and he sought defense in general denial. "You have been listening to East Side neighborhood gossip, Marian, and I shouldn't have believed it of you. You have heard one of the hundreds of groundless ante-election libels that are the common ammunition used against anyone in politics."