The question she had dreaded and shrunk from all the time! She knew it would come, and now that it had, what could she say?
How easy it would have been to confess the truth to a less passionate and jealous mind. It was no sin, not even a fault in her, and she was not afraid to tell him save with the moral cowardice that makes one dread the necessary utterance of words that must inflict pain. What harm was there in that dreamy passion that had cast its glamour over a few months of her girlhood? It was unkind in him to probe her heart so deeply. She dared not own the truth to him if its telling were to make him unhappy! And along with this feeling there was another--the natural shrinking of a proud woman from laying bare the hidden secrets of her soul, pure though they be, to mortal sight. A woman does not want to tell her husband, the man who loves her, and believes her irresistible to all, that another man has been proof against her charms, that the first pure waters of love's perennial fountain had gushed at the touch of another, who let the tide flow on unheeding and uncaring, and a man has no business to ask it. But where does the line of man's "little brief authority" cross its boundaries? We have never found out yet. It is left, perhaps, for some of the fair and curious ones of our sex who are "strong-minded" in their "day and generation" to solve that interesting problem.
So, Gracie, debarred by confession by so many and grave considerations, in desperation, parried the question.
"Paul, do you know that I am sleepy and tired, while you are keeping me up with such idle nonsense? If we must begin at this late day to worry over our past loves and dreams, suppose you begin first by telling me how many separate ladies you loved before you ever met me! Come, begin with the first on the list."
"It begins and ends with--yourself," he said, gravely and firmly.
"Like the story of Mrs. Osgood's Evelyn," she rejoined, smiling, and beginning to hum lightly:
"It began with--'My Evelyn fairest!' It ended with--'Evelyn best!' And epithets fondest and dearest, Were lavished between on the rest."
Then breaking off, she says more seriously and softly:
"Then try to think that is the same with me. Don't worry over such idle speculations. I am tired and half sick, dear."