“How they adore you!” he said suddenly.
The words and tone startled her. The aspect she herself had presented was the last thing in her thoughts. The tribute, coming from him in the midst of her silent adoration of him himself, brought swiftly into play a range of complex feelings and the tears to her eyes. He could not help noticing their moisture.
“What a tender heart you have!” he said in his kind way, falling into inevitable error.
“It is silly of me,” she replied with a bright smile.
She could not undeceive him. Often a woman by reason of her sex has to receive what she knows is not her due. But she compensates the eternal justice of things by giving up more of her truest self to the man. A few moments later, however, on their homeward walk, she tried to be conscientious.
“I cannot bear you to praise me—as you do sometimes.”
“Why?”
A man, even the most sympathetic, is seldom satisfied unless he has reasons for everything. Katherine, in spite of her seriousness, smiled at the masculine directness. She replied somewhat earnestly,—
“Because I do not deserve it in the first place, and in the second, it means so much more, coming from you.”
“I said that those old folks adore you, and that you are tender-hearted,” he answered conclusively; “and both facts are true, and it would be a bad day for anyone but yourself who gainsaid them.”