"Come, come, I cannot have you vexed with me like this," he said, stopping her and taking her hand. "You know I must go directly, and I have wasted ever so much time already. Won't you promise me to think better of it, and not be hurt with me any longer?"
"I don't know," looking down, for his voice was rather too persuasive in its eloquence.
"You know very well, do you not, that I would not say or do anything to hurt you really? but my position is a difficult one. I don't think I ever before realized how difficult it was. Things seem all in a tangle somehow, and it is out of my power to right them."
"Why?" she asked timidly, and her brief indignation died away. Something in his manner reassured her; he had not really turned against her.
"That is just what I cannot tell you. My affairs have all got crooked, and there is no shaping them. I suppose time and patience are needed, but there's terribly hard work before me. I don't want to lose heart over it. I could not bear you just now to say what you did."
"About not being friends?"
"Yes; whatever happens we must be friends, dear friends, always. I think you might promise me as much as that."
"I do promise you that," she said, looking straight at him; and the expression in her eyes haunted him long afterwards, it was so frank and sorrowful.
"Then I am content," he replied, and then almost abruptly he lifted his hat and moved away. Had she understood him? Could she follow the meaning of those vague words? Had she comprehended that it was only friendship for which he asked, and with which he professed himself content? He could not make up his mind how far she had understood him.
He would have been almost aghast at his success if he could have read Queenie's thoughts as she went down the lane again, and strove with a sick heart to piece together the fragments of talk in her memory.