She did not remove her eyes from his face, but she blushed to the roots of her hair.
“I am not sure that I understand,” she said with a slight air of offence.
“No?” he said. “And perhaps I did not quite mean that. What I did mean, and do mean, what I am hoping, what I am looking forward to, Henrietta——” and there he broke off.
He seemed to find it necessary to begin again:
“Perhaps I had better explain,” he said more soberly. “You told me that morning by the lake some home-truths, you remember? You showed me that what had happened was not all your fault; was perhaps not at all your fault. And you showed me this with so much energy and power, that I went away with the first clear impression of you I had had in my life. Yes, with the feeling that I had never known you until then.” He dropped his eyes, and looked thoughtfully at something on the table. “And one of the things I remember best, and which I shall always remember, was your saying that I had never paid any court to you.”
“It was true,” she said, in a low voice.
And she too did not look at him, but kept her eyes bent on the spoon with which she toyed.
“Yes. Well, if you will let the old state of things be so far reinstated as to—let me begin to pay my court to you now, I am not confident, I am very far from confident, that I can please you. I am rather old, for one thing”—with a rueful laugh—“to make love gracefully, and rather stiff and—political. But owing to the trouble I have brought upon you in the past——”
“I never said but that we both brought it!” Henrietta objected suddenly.
“Well, whoever brought it——”