“It is I who don’t understand. And I dare not ask you to explain!”
She was terrified at this temerity; and yet she must press on—there was no other way. She saw gates opening before her—gates into wonderland!
She leaned forward with a little gesture of abandonment. “Listen, Frank Shirley!” she said. (What a masterstroke was that!) “I have known about you since I was a little girl. And I understand the way things are now, because I am a friend of Miss Atkinson’s. She asked you to come over and meet me, and you didn’t. Now if the reason was that you have no interest in me—why then I’m annoying you, and I’m behaving outrageously, and I’m preparing humiliation for myself. But if the reason is that you think I wouldn’t meet you fairly—that I wouldn’t judge you as I would any other man—why, don’t you see, that would be cruel, that would be wicked! If you were afraid that I wanted to—to patronize you—to do good to you——”
She stopped. Surely she had said enough!
There was a long silence, while he gazed at her—reading her very soul, she feared. “Suppose, Miss Castleman,” he said, at last, “that I was afraid that you wanted to do harm to me?”
That was getting near to what she wanted! “Are you afraid?” she asked.
“Possibly I am,” he replied. “It is easy for those who have never suffered to preach to those who have never done anything else.”
Sylvia did not know quite how to meet that. It was so much more serious than she had been looking for, when she had slipped that ring under the saddle-cloth! “Oh,” she cried, “what shall I say to you?”
“I will tell you exactly,” he said, “and then neither of us will be taking advantage of the other. You are offering me your friendship, are you not?”
“Yes.”