"I didn't think any harm of you," Ford protested earnestly, leaning forward from his perch on the rail and striving to compel her to look at him. "We 've been good friends, and you might have trusted me not to think evil of you. I simply didn't understand--nothing else. You can't seriously be offended because you imagined that I was thinking certain thoughts. It isn't fair."
"Hurt, then," he substituted. "Anything you please."
He stepped down from his seat and walked a few paces away, with his hands deeply sunk in his pockets, and then walked back again.
"I say," he said abruptly; "it 's a question of what I think of you, it seems. Let me tell you what I do think."
Margaret turned her face towards him. He was frowning heavily, with an appearance of injury and annoyance. He spoke in curt jets.
"It 's only since I 've known you that I 've really worried over being a lunger," he said. "The Army--I could stand that. But seeing you and talking to you, and knowing I 'd no right to say a word--no right to try and lead things that way, even, for your sake as much as mine--it 's been hard. Because--this is what I do think--it 's seemed to me that you were worth more than everything else. I 'd have given the world to tell you so, and ask you--well, you know what I mean."
Margaret was not so steeped in sorrows but she could mark this evasion of a plain statement with amusement.
Ford, staring at her intently, clicked with impatience.
"Well, then," he said in the tone of one who is goaded to extreme lengths; "well then, Miss--er--Margaret--" he paused, seemingly struck by a pleasant flavor in the name as he spoke it--"Margaret," he repeated, less urgently; "I 'm hanged if I know how to say it, but--I love you."
There was an appreciable interval while they remained gazing at each other, he breathless and discomposed, she grave and unresponding.
"I do," he urged. "On my soul, I do. Margaret, it 's true. I 've been--loving--you for a long time. I thought perhaps you might care a little, too, sometimes, and I 'd have told you if it was n't for this chest of mine. That 's what I meant when you said you were going away and I asked you to stay. I thought you understood then."
"I did understand," she replied, and sat thoughtful.