She turned her face away sharply.
"I'd—I'd rather not."
"Very well. Good-night."
He went out of the room without another word, and Marie stood where he had left her, staring helplessly at the closed door.
He had asked her to kiss him and she had refused—refused, though 77 her whole heart and soul had longed to say "yes."
Had she been wrong? She did not know. She had tried so hard all along to do only the best thing for his happiness, and yet she had been miserably conscious of the hurt in his face as she turned her own away.
Should she go after him and ask him to come back? She longed, yet feared to go. Perhaps he would only kiss her in the old careless way as a brother might have done, and it was not that sort of kiss she wanted.
Half a loaf is better than no bread! The old proverb floated mockingly before her. But half a loaf was no good to her, starving for love as she was; better die, she thought passionately, than have anything less than all.
Twice she went to the door and turned the handle, but each time she came back again to pace the room restlessly.
He had not really wanted to kiss her, or he would not have asked. He would have taken it without waiting for so poor a thing as her permission. Her cheeks burned as she thought of this humiliating fortnight which people were calling her "honeymoon."