"I am sorry." Miss Hitchcock blushed as she spoke. "I will go away—I didn't mean to intrude—I thought—"
"No, don't go! I didn't mean you. I wanted to be alone, all alone for a little while, but I am glad now that you came, that you cared to come. You didn't know Alves."
"She wouldn't let me know her," Miss Hitchcock protested gently.
"Yes, I remember. You see, our life was peculiar. I think Alves was afraid of you, of all the world."
"I knew how you loved her," Miss Hitchcock exclaimed irrelevantly.
Sommers tried to answer. He felt like talking to this warm-hearted woman; he wanted to talk, but he could not phrase the complex feeling in his heart. Everything about Alves had something in it he could not make another, even the most sympathetic soul in the world, understand. It was like trying to explain an impression of a whole life.
"There is so much I can't tell any one," he said at last, with a wan smile. "Don't misunderstand—you'd have to know the whole, and I couldn't begin to make you know it."
"Don't try," she said, tears coming to her eyes. "I know that it has been noble and generous—on both sides," she added.
"It has ended," he answered drearily. "I don't know where to begin."
"Can't I send for some one, some friend?" she suggested.