"What a tragedy it must be to be so distrustful of love as you are!" he said, almost with violence.
"You haven't lived my life."
She, too, spoke almost with violence, and there was violence in her eyes.
"You haven't lived for years in the midst of condemnation. Your friend, Doctor Isaacson, secretly condemns me. I know it. And so I'm afraid of him. I don't pretend to have any real reason—any reason that would commend itself to a man. Women don't need such reasons for their fears."
"And yet you say that you like Isaacson!"
"So I do, in a way. At least, I thought I did, till you told me you'd written to him to tell him about us and our life on the Nile."
He could not help smiling.
"Oh!" he said, moving nearer to her. "I shall never understand women. What a reason for dislike of a man hundreds of miles away from us!"
"Hundreds of miles—yes! And if your letter brought him to us! Suppose he took it into his head to run out and see for himself if what you wrote was true?"
"Ruby! How wild you are in your suppositions!"