“Yes. He is a man who believes that women may change, for reason or no reason; and”—
“You—you mean to take him when he comes back?” gasped the young man.
“Never! Not if he came a thousand times!”
“Then what is it you want me to advise you about?” he faltered.
“Nothing!” she answered, with freezing hauteur. She suddenly put up her arms across her eyes, with the beautiful, artless action of a shame-smitten child, and left her young figure in bewildering relief. “Oh, don’t you see that I love you?”
“Couldn’t you understand,—couldn’t you see what I meant?” she asked again that night, as they lost themselves on the long stretch of the moonlit beach. With his arm close about that lovely shape they would have seemed but one person to the inattentive observer, as they paced along in the white splendor.
“I couldn’t risk anything. I had spoken, once for all. I always thought that for a man to offer himself twice was indelicate and unfair. I could never have done it.”
“That’s very sweet in you,” she said; and perhaps she would have praised in the same terms the precisely opposite sentiment. “It’s some comfort,” she added, with a deep-fetched sigh, “to think I had to speak.”
He laughed. “You didn’t find it so easy to make love!”
“Oh, nothing is easy that men have to do!” she answered, with passionate earnestness.