"Yes. You answered very vaguely. I think I frightened you," she said, laughing.
"They were love letters," he said. "I didn't happen to know it; that is all. I was in love with you then. I didn't realize it; you did not believe it. But now I know it was so."
"How could you have been in love with me?" she inquired, astonished.
"You asked me that in your letters. I thought it over and I didn't see how I could be, either. I wasn't much more than a boy. Boys drift with the prevailing tide. The tide set away from home and from you.... Yet, I was in love with you once, Steve."
She bent her head and looked down gravely at her slender hand, which lay across his.
"That was very dear of you," she murmured.
After a silence:
"And—you?" he asked.
"Do you mean, was I ever in love with you?"
"Yes."