The long silence was becoming painful to both, when he forced himself to break it.
“I am so very, very deeply beholden to you,” he said, in a constrained tone, “that—that I must ask you, Henrietta, to listen to me for a few minutes—even if it be unpleasant to you.”
She laughed awkwardly.
“If it is only,” she answered, “because you are beholden to me—that—that you feel it necessary to thank me at length, please don’t. You will only overwhelm me.”
“It is not for that reason only,” he said. And he knew that he spoke, much against his will, with dreadful solemnity. “No. Naturally we must have much to say to one another. I, in particular, who owe to you——”
“Please let that be,” she protested.
“But I cannot. I cannot!” he repeated. “You have done me so great a service, at a risk so great, and under circumstances so—so——”
“So remarkable,” she cried, with something of her old girlish manner, “that you cannot find words in which to describe them! Then please don’t.” And then, more seriously: “I did not do what I did to be thanked.”
“Then why?” he asked quickly. “Why did you do it?”
“Did you think,” she protested, “that I did it to be thanked?”