“I? I didn’t know that I was,” he answered. “I supposed I was pretty well. I dare say I ought to be ashamed of showing it in that way. But if you ask me, well, I will tell you; I don’t find it any easier than I did at first.”
“You are to blame, then!” she cried. “If I were a man, I should not let such a thing wear upon me for a moment.”
“Oh, I dare say I shall live through it,” he answered, with the national whimsicality that comes to our aid in most emergencies.
A little pang went through her heart, but she retorted, “I wouldn’t go to Europe to escape it, nor up the Nile. I would stay and fight it where I was.” “Stay?” He seemed to have caught hopefully at the word.
“I thought you were stronger. If you give up in this way how can you expect me”—She stopped; she hardly knew what she had intended to say; she feared that he knew.
But he only said: “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to trouble you with the sight of me. I had a plan for getting over the cliff without letting you know, and having Maynard come down to me there.”
“And did you really mean,” she cried piteously, “to go away without trying to see me again?”
“Yes,” he owned simply. “I thought I might catch a glimpse of you, but I didn’t expect to speak to you.”
“Did you hate me so badly as that? What had I done to you?”
“Done?” He gave a sorrowful laugh; and added, with an absent air, “Yes, it’s really like doing something to me! And sometimes it seems as if you had done it purposely.”