“Yes,” said he, “and there never was a summer such as this is going to be.”
I knew he was very athletic, but I don't believe I'd thought how much he cared for out-of-doors. “Come down here,” I said. “This is Lorraine's jungle. There's a seat in it, and we can smell the ferns.”
Charles Edward had been watering the garden, and everything was sweet. Thousands of odors came out such as I never smelled before. And all the time the moon was rising. After we had sat there awhile, talking a little about college, about my trip abroad, I suddenly found I could not go on. There were tears in my eyes. I felt as if so good a friend ought to know how I had behaved—for I must have been very weak and silly to make such a mistake. He ought to hear the worst about me. “Oh,” I said, “do you know what happened to me?”
He made a little movement toward me with both hands. Then he took them back and sat quite still and said, in that kind voice: “I know you are going abroad, and when you come back you will laugh at the dolls you played with when you were a child.” But I cried, softly, though, because it was just as if I were alone, thinking things out and being sorry, sorry for myself—and ashamed. Until now I'd never known how ashamed I was. “Don't cry, child,” he was saying. “For God's sake, don't cry!” I think it came over me then, as it hadn't before, that all that part of my life was spoiled. I'd been engaged and thought I liked somebody, and now it was all over and done. “I don't know what I'm crying for,” I said, at last, when I could stop. “I suppose it's because I'm different now, different from the other girls, different from myself. I can't ever be happy any more.”
He spoke, very quickly. “Is it because you liked Goward so much?”
“Like him!” I said. “Like Harry Goward? Why, I—” There I stopped, because I couldn't think of any word small enough, and I think he understood, for he laughed out quickly.
“Now,” said he, “I'm a psychologist. You remember that, don't you? It used to impress you a good deal.”
“Oh,” said I, “it does impress me. Nobody has ever seemed so wise as you. Nobody!”
“Then it's understood that I'm a sage from the Orient. I know the workings of the human mind. And I tell you a profound truth: that the only way to stop thinking of a thing is to stop thinking of it. Now, you're not to think of Goward and all this puppet-show again. Not a minute. Not an instant. Do you hear?” He sounded quite stern, and I answered as if I had been in class.
“Yes, sir.”