I thought not. Already the army was making for Chester, and so toward the Head of Elk. “No; I must go.” On this she rose.
“Is it the same, Darthea, and am I to go away with no more hope than the years have brought me?”
“Why,” she said, colouring, “do you make it so hard for me—your friend?”
“Do I make it hard?”
“Yes. I used to say no to men, and think no more of the thing or of them, but I am troubled; and this awful war! I am grown older, and to hurt a man—a man like you—gives me pain as it did not use to do.”
“But you have not said no,” said I; “and I am an obstinate man.”
“Why will you force me to say no? Why should I? You know well enough what I think and feel. Why insist that I put it in words? It were kinder—not to urge me.”
It seemed a strange speech. I said I did not understand her.
“Then you had better go. I am engaged to Mr. Arthur Wynne, sir. I have had no word of him for a year, and can get no letter to him.”
I might have given her Miss Franks’s letter, and poured out to her the story of his treachery and baseness. I may have been wrong, but something in me forbade it, and I preferred to wait yet longer.