“Different?”
“Yes, from what you were last night,” he answered, with an aggrieved air.
“Oh, we see some things differently by daylight,” she lightly explained. “Won't you sit down?”
“No, thank you,” Bartley replied, sadly but unresentfully. “I think I had better be going. I see there is something wrong—”
“I don't see why you say there is anything wrong,” she retorted. “What have I done?”
“Oh, you have not done anything; I take it back. It is all right. But when I came here this morning—encouraged—hoping—that you had the same feeling as myself, and you seem to forget everything but a ceremonious acquaintanceship—why, it is all right, of course. I have no reason to complain; but I must say that I can't help being surprised.” He saw her lips quiver and her bosom heave. “Marcia, do you blame me for feeling hurt at your coldness when I came here to tell you—to tell you I—I love you?” With his nerves all unstrung, and his hunger for sympathy, he really believed that he had come to tell her this. “Yes,” he added, bitterly, “I will tell you, though it seems to be the last word I shall speak to you. I'll go, now.”
“Bartley! You shall never go!” she cried, throwing herself in his way. “Do you think I don't care for you, too? You may kiss me,—you may kill me, now!”
The passionate tears sprang to her eyes, without the sound of sobs or the contortion of weeping, and she did not wait for his embrace. She flung her arms around his neck and held him fast, crying, “I wouldn't let you, for your own sake, darling; and if I had died for it—I thought I should die last night—I was never going to let you kiss me again till you said—till—till—now! Don't you see?” She caught him tighter, and hid her face in his neck, and cried and laughed for joy and shame, while he suffered her caresses with a certain bewilderment. “I want to tell you now—I want to explain,” she said, lifting her face and letting him from her as far as her arms, caught around his neck, would reach, and fervidly searching his eyes, lest some ray of what he would think should escape her. “Don't speak a word first! Father saw us at the door last night,—he happened to be coming downstairs, because he couldn't sleep,—just when you—Oh, Bartley, don't!” she implored, at the little smile that made his mustache quiver. “And he asked me whether we were engaged; and when I couldn't tell him we were, I know what he thought. I knew how he despised me, and I determined that, if you didn't tell me that you cared for me—And that's the reason, Bartley, and not—not because I didn't care more for you than I do for the whole world. And—and—you don't mind it, now, do you? It was for your sake, dearest.”
Whether Bartley perfectly divined or not all the feeling at which her words hinted, it was delicious to be clung about by such a pretty girl as Marcia Gaylord, to have her now darting her face into his neck-scarf with intolerable consciousness, and now boldly confronting him with all-defying fondness while she lightly pushed him and pulled him here and there in the vehemence of her appeal. Perhaps such a man, in those fastnesses of his nature which psychology has not yet explored, never loses, even in the tenderest transports, the sense of prey as to the girl whose love he has won; but if this is certain, it is also certain that he has transports which are tender, and Bartley now felt his soul melted with affection that was very novel and sweet.
“Why, Marcia!” he said, “what a strange girl you are!” He sunk into his chair again, and, putting his arms around her waist, drew her upon his knee, like a child.