"You see now why I asked you to come to-day," she said without preliminary. "Now you have seen them, and there is nothing more to conceal."
"I know, I know," he replied dully. "I am trying to think it out. I can't see it yet."
They took entirely for granted that each knew the subject of the other's thoughts. The girl seemed much the more self-possessed of the two.
"We may as well understand each other," she said quietly, without emotion. "You have told me a certain thing, and have asked me for a certain answer. I could not give it to you before without deceiving you. Now the answer depends on you. I have deceived you in a way," she went on more earnestly, "but I did not mean to. I did not realize the difference, truly I didn't, until I saw the girl on the train. Then I knew the difference between her and me, and between her's and mine. And when you turned away, I saw that you were her kind, and I saw, too, that you ought to know everything there was about me. Then you spoke."
"I meant what I said, too," he interrupted. "You must believe that, Mary, whatever comes."
"I was sorry you did," she went on, as though she had not heard him. Then with just a touch of impatience tingeing the even calm of her voice, "Oh, why will men insist on saying those things!" she cried. "The way to win a girl is not thus. He should see her often, without speaking of love, being everything to her, until at last she finds she can not live without him."
"Have I been that to you, Mary? Has it come to that with me?" he asked wistfully.
"Heaven help me, I am afraid it has!" she cried, burying her face in her hands.
A great gladness leaped up into his face, and died as the blaze of a fire leaps up and expires.
"That makes it easier—and harder," he said. "It is bad enough as it is. I don't know how I can make you understand, dear."