“Won’t you promise to do differently the rest of the season?”
Again the girl paused before she answered.
“No,” she said then. “You understand why?”
“Not if I request otherwise?”
“Don’t request it, please,” swiftly, “as a favor. I repeat, you understand.”
“Understand, certainly, what you mean to imply.” The big hands on the man’s knees drooped a little wearily. “You don’t trust me wholly, even yet, do you, Elice?” he added abruptly.
“Trust you! That’s a bit cruel.”
The man shifted in his seat unconsciously.
“If it was I beg your pardon,” he said gently. “I didn’t intend it so. I suppose I’m wrong; but what others, mere observers, say seems to me so trivial. The gossip of people who’d knife you without compunction the instant your back was turned for their own gratification or gain—to let them judge and sentence—pardon 288 me once more. I shan’t mention the matter again.”
The girl looked steadily out into the night, almost as though its peace were hers. “Yes,” she returned, “you are wrong—but in a different way than you intimated. It isn’t what others would say at all that prevents my accepting, but my own judgment of myself. You’ve done so many things for me; and I in return—I’m never able to do anything whatever. It’s a matter of self-respect wholly. One can’t accept, and accept, and accept always—in the certainty of remaining permanently in debt.”