‘I want you to promise first— Yes, it is dreadfully unreasonable,’ she added, in a mild distress. ‘But do promise!’
John by this time seemed to have a feeling that it was all up with him for the present. ‘I promise,’ he said listlessly.
‘It is that you won’t speak to me about this for ever so long,’ she returned, with emphatic kindliness.
‘Very good,’ he replied; ‘very good. Dear Anne, you don’t think I have been unmanly or unfair in starting this anew?’
Anne looked into his face without a smile. ‘You have been perfectly natural,’ she murmured. ‘And so I think have I.’
John, mournfully: ‘You will not avoid me for this, or be afraid of me? I will not break my word. I will not worry you any more.’
‘Thank you, John. You need not have said worry; it isn’t that.’
‘Well, I am very blind and stupid. I have been hurting your heart all the time without knowing it. It is my fate, I suppose. Men who love women the very best always blunder and give more pain than those who love them less.’
Anne laid one of her hands on the other as she softly replied, looking down at them, ‘No one loves me as well as you, John; nobody in the world is so worthy to be loved; and yet I cannot anyhow love you rightly.’ And lifting her eyes, ‘But I do so feel for you that I will try as hard as I can to think about you.’
‘Well, that is something,’ he said, smiling. ‘You say I must not speak about it again for ever so long; how long?’