"If I tell you, you will come no nearer; will you?" she asked.
"No. Tell me."
She sewed for a while at random, not conscious what her fingers were doing, striving to think clearly in the menace of these new emotions, the power of which she was divining now, realizing more deeply every second.
"I'll try to tell you," she said: "I didn't know anything—about myself—this morning. What we had been to each other I considered friendship. Remember it was my first friendship with a man. And—I thought it was that."
After a silence: "Was it anything deeper?" he asked.
"Yes, deeper.... You frightened me at first.... I was hurt.... But not ashamed or angry. And I did not understand why.... Until you spoke and said—what you said."
"That I love you?"
"Yes.... After that things grew slowly clearer to me. I don't know what I said to you—half the things I said on the way back—only that I made you angry—and I continued, knowing that you were angry and that I—I was almost laughing—I don't know why—only that I needed time to try to think.... You can't understand, can you?"
"I think so."
She looked up, then bowed her head once more.