Her sweet face lightened with an expression of tenderness, regret and sympathy all commingled.
“Because it’s so much better not to!” she declared. “You are such a clever, clever man!--and I’m such a silly little woman!--but all the same let us be friends! Oh, you know what I mean!”
Yes, he knew! And his heart gave a big “dunt” in his chest, of nervous disappointment and chagrin, yet--with those frank blue eyes looking trustfully into his own, he could but respond to their confidence. He pressed the little hand he held more closely and smiled. As already hinted, his smile was particularly attractive, and just now with a touch of pathos in it was more so than ever.
“I think I do!” he replied. “But I don’t like ‘hedging.’ I’m a bit of a coward in most things,--but when the worst comes to the worst or the best to the best, I’d rather face the music than run away. I know what I want; and _you_ know what I want. I want to marry you!”
There was a tense pause. She still knelt at his feet,--still looked sweetly up into his face, but she said nothing.
“And,” he continued, steadily, “you don’t want to marry _me_! There! It’s all out! Isn’t it?”
“Not quite!” she said. “I do know you want to marry me--and--when I first knew you--I rather fancied--yes!--I thought I should like to marry _you_!”
“You did?--you did?” he exclaimed, a wave of extraordinary youthfulness sweeping over him.
“Yes, I did!” she averred. “You seemed so clever--and so kind! But--but--when the kindness was lost in the cleverness--then--then I thought differently!”
He withdrew his hand from hers, and a shadow darkened his features.
“You see,” she went on, in gentle coaxing accents, “when you first came here to help Dad, you were charming!--yes, perfectly charming! And I took you for walks to all the pretty places about here, and we got on so well together that I used to say to myself, what an honour it would be if such a brilliant man were to care enough for me to marry me! Yes, I really did! But when, little by little, you dropped the ‘company manners’ as children say, and showed me another side altogether, I felt then that you were _too_ brilliant!--_too_ clever to be always kind to a silly little woman like myself whose ‘sentiment’ always outruns her brains. And I--I think”--her voice sank softly--“that in marriage kindliness is better than cleverness.”