“What did you ever touch that wasn't hard?” she said, with a sweet, reminiscent laugh.
They were silent for a moment and then he said: “I'm not quite satisfied with your reason for not coming over with your father just now—really, you see, it is in a line with your actions for the last six weeks. Helen, you actually have avoided me.”
“On the contrary,” she said, “you have made it a point to stay away from me.”
“Well,” he sighed, “considering, you know, Sanders and his claims, I really thought I'd better keep my place.”
“Oh!” Helen exclaimed, and then she sank deeper into the vines.
For one instant he stood trembling before her, and then he asked, boldly: “Helen, tell me, are you engaged to him?”
She made no answer for a moment, and then in the moonlight he saw her flushed face against the vines and caught an almost startled glance from her wonderful eyes. She looked straight at him.
“No, I'm not, and I never have been,” she said.
“You never have been?” he repeated. “Oh, Helen—” But he went no further. For a moment he hung fire, then he said: “Don't you care for him, Helen? Are you and I good enough friends for me to dare to ask that?”
“I thought once that I might love him, in time” she faltered; “but when I came home and found—and found how deeply I had misunderstood and wronged you, I—I—” She broke off, her face buried in the leaves of the vines.