Her words did not shake his resolution in the least, though they made him profoundly wretched, since he despaired of her ever comprehending his distaste for the career she had mapped out for him. Yet it seemed to him a most brutal thing to do to even try and explain this to her.
“I'm sorry,” he said, with a gulp. “But you'd better know it now—I've enlisted!”
The hand she had been resting on his arm, fell at her side. There was a ghastly pause.
“Stephen! Stephen—how could you?” she cried.
“I am sorry,” he repeated, and there was such depth of misery in his tone that she forbore to reproach him.
“Does Mr. Benson know what you have done?” she asked. As in all her difficulties, she turned now as then, instinctively to the one person who had always been equal to the occasion.
“Yes,” said the boy, “I told him;” but his face clouded.
“What did he say? Didn't he think you had done very wrong?” questioned Virginia.
Stephen nodded.
“What did he propose?”