"I did affront you."
"You didn't intend to.... It would have been easy enough to tell you that I liked you—but not that way.... And all those miserable, lonely, unhappy months could have been spared me——"
"Were you unhappy?"
"Didn't you know it?"
"I never dreamed you were."
"Well, I was—thinking of what I had done to you.... And all those men bothering me, every moment, and everybody at me to marry everybody else—and all I wanted was to be friends with you!... I wasn't sure of what I wanted from the very beginning, of course, but I knew it as soon as I saw you at the Bazaar again.... I was so lonely, Rix——"
She looked up out of clear, fearless eyes; he leaned forward and took her hands in his.
"I know what you want," he said quietly. "You want my friendship and you have it—every atom of it, Strelsa. I will never overstep the borders again; I understand you thoroughly.... You know what you have done for me—what I was when you came into my life. My gratitude is a living thing. Through you, because of you, the whole unknown world—all of real life—has opened before me. You did it for me, Strelsa."
"You did it for yourself and for me," she said in a low voice. "What are you trying to tell me, Rix? That I did this for you? When it is you—it was you from the first—it has always been you who led, who awakened first, who showed courage and common sense and patience and the cheerful wisdom which—which saved me——"
The emotion in her voice stirred him thrillingly; her hands lay confidently in his; her gray eyes met his so sweetly, so honestly, that hope awoke for a moment.