“You know I didn’t! Now, then,” she cried, “you have insulted me, and you never did that before. You were very good and noble and generous, and wouldn’t let me blame myself for anything. I wanted always to remember that of you; for I didn’t believe that any man could be so magnanimous. But it seems that you don’t care to have me respect you!”
“Respect?” he repeated, in the same vague way. “No, I shouldn’t care about that unless it was included in the other. But you know whether I have accused you of anything, or whether I have insulted you. I won’t excuse myself. I think that ought to be insulting to your common sense.”
“Then why should you have wished to avoid seeing me to-day? Was it to spare yourself?” she demanded, quite incoherently now. “Or did you think I should not be equal to the meeting?”
“I don’t know what to say to you,” answered the young man. “I think I must be crazy.” He halted, and looked at her in complete bewilderment. “I don’t understand you at all.”
“I wished to see you very much. I wanted your advice, as—as—a friend.” He shook his head. “Yes! you shall be my friend, in this at least. I can claim it—demand it. You had no right to—to—make me—trust you so much, and—and then—desert me.”
“Oh, very well,” he answered. “If any advice of mine—But I couldn’t go through that sacrilegious farce of being near you and not”—She waited breathlessly, a condensed eternity, for him to go on; but he stopped at that word, and added: “How can I advise you?”
The disappointment was so cruel that the tears came into her eyes and ran down her face, which she averted from him. When she could control herself she said, “I have an opportunity of going on in my profession now, in a way that makes me sure of success.”
“I am very glad on your account. You must be glad to realize”
“No, no!” she retorted wildly. “I am not glad!”
“I thought you”—