"Why, truly. You don't imagine—"
The octoroon opened her dark eyes until she might have been some weird.
"Oh, Peter, please, please put such a mad idea away from you! Peter, you've been living here alone in this old house until you don't see things clearly. Dear Peter, don't you know? You can't go out and talk like that to white folks and—and not have some terrible thing happen to you! Oh, Peter, if you would only marry me, it would cure you of such wildness!" Involuntarily she got up, holding out her arms to him, offering herself to his needs, with her frightened eyes fixed on his.
It made him exquisitely uncomfortable again. He made a little sound designed to comfort and reassure her. He would do very well. He was something of a diplomat in his way. He had got along with the boys in Harvard very well indeed. In fact, he was rather a man of the world. No need to worry about him, though it was awfully sweet of her.
Cissie picked up her handkerchief with its torn edge, which she had laid on the table. Evidently she was about to go.
"I surely don't know what will become of me," she said, looking at it.
In a reversal of feeling Peter did not want her to go away quite then. He cast about for some excuse to detain her a moment longer.
"Now, Cissie," he began, "if you are really going to leave Hooker's Bend—"
"I'm not going," she said, with a long exhalation. "I—" she swallowed— "I just thought that up to—ask you to—to—You see," she explained, a little breathless, "I thought you still loved me and had forgiven me by the way you watched for me every day at the window."
This speech touched Peter more keenly than any of the little drama the girl had invented. It hit him so shrewdly he could think of nothing more to say.