"
"But I didn't see any such thing," he protested. "I spoke because I
couldn't help it any longer."
She laughed triumphantly. "Of course you think so! And that shows that
you are only a man after all; in spite of your finessing. But I am going
to have the credit of it. I knew that you were holding back because you
were too proud, or thought you hadn't the right, or something. Weren't
you?" She startled him with the sudden vehemence of her challenge: "If
you pretend, that you weren't I shall never forgive you!"
"But I was! Of course I was. I was afraid--"
"Isn't that what I said?" She triumphed over him with another laugh, and
cowered a little closer to him, if that could be.
They were standing, without knowing how they had got to their feet; and
now without any purpose of the kind, they began to stroll again among the
garden paths, and to ask and to answer questions, which touched every
point of their common history, and yet left it a mine of inexhaustible
knowledge for all future time. Out of the sweet and dear delight of this
encyclopedian reserve two or three facts appeared with a present
distinctness. One of these was that Burnamy had regarded her refusal to
be definite at Carlsbad as definite refusal, and had meant never to see
her again, and certainly never to speak again of love to her.
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