He took half the lemonade at a gulp, and he answered as he set the glass down: "I know you always have the highest ideal. When I differ from you, I ought to doubt myself."
A generous sob rose in Editha's throat for the humility of a man, so very nearly perfect, who was willing to put himself below her.
Besides, she felt that he was never so near slipping through her fingers as when he took that meek way.
"You shall not say that! Only, for once I happen to be right." She seized his hand in her two hands, and poured her soul from her eyes into his. "Don't you think so?" she entreated him.
He released his hand and drank the rest of his lemonade, and she added, "Have mine, too," but he shook his head in answering, "I've no business to think so, unless I act so, too."
Her heart stopped a beat before it pulsed on with leaps that she felt in her neck. She had noticed that strange thing in men; they seemed to feel bound to do what they believed, and not think a thing was finished when they said it, as girls did. She knew what was in his mind, but she pretended not, and she said, "Oh, I am not sure."
He went on as if to himself without apparently heeding her. "There's only one way of proving one's faith in a thing like this."
She could not say that she understood, but she did understand.
He went on again. "If I believed—if I felt as you do about this war—Do you wish me to feel as you do?"