“Let’s go back to the beginning. There were two real reasons why I posed as a boy. One was that it gave me more freedom of limb for going through the forest and for scaling the valley wall, and the other was that it made me less conspicuous to the guards,—I could have escaped if they had detected me. On my word, dear Joseph, I never intended to deceive you long about that.”
She cautiously looked round at me, for I was silent. A cheap resentment at learning that I had been unnecessarily tricked must have betrayed itself, for the dear girl took my hands.
“Joseph,———” she began.
“Then why did you keep it up, dear?” I asked.
“Joseph, the time was when your want of perception was mistaken by me for dulness, for obtuseness,—for such a lack of understanding as makes a man or a woman not worth while. But I discovered that it was not dulness at all. For a time I refused to believe that a human being could have what I saw in you.”
If I have ever seen wondering fondness it was in her eyes.
“What was it, dear?” I asked uneasily.
“Your trust which sees only the true, and, unwittingly taking into your heart the false with the true, makes the false true with your trust.”
I was silent with the deep thankfulness that God had sent such a woman into the world and into my meager life.
“So, Joseph, I prolonged that deception until all doubt of what you are was gone. I am glad that I did, and am sorry that I can think of no more tests.” There was a dash of her dear mischief in that speech. “And now that this is a time of confession and understanding,—you started it, remember,—I must say that one of the deceptions played on you———They were really harmless, weren’t they, dear Joseph?”