"
She smiled, then pressed her hands suddenly to her eyes.
"I understood," she said.
"Well, then ..." But he didn't at once go on. Stood there a while longer
at the window, then crossed the room and brought up before her
book-shelves, staring blindly at the titles. He hadn't looked at her
even as he crossed the room.
"Oh, it's a presumptuous thing to try to say," he broke out at last, "a
pitifully unnecessary thing to say, because you must know it without my
telling you. But when you went away you said--you said it was because
you hadn't--my--friendship! You said that was the thing you wanted and
that you were going to try to earn it. And in Dubuque you told me that
I'd evidently never be able to understand that you could have been happy
in that room on Clark Street, that I'd wanted to 'rescue' you from; that
I'd never be able to see that the thing you were doing there was a fine
thing, worth doing, entitled to my respect. Well, the things I'd been
saying to you and the things I'd been doing, justified you in thinking
that.
Pages:
981
982
983
984
985
986
987
988
989
990
991
992
993
994
995
996
997
998
999
1000
1001
1002
1003
1004
1005