Page:Caroline Lockhart--The full of the Moon.djvu/277

 "Don't go!"

"But can't you see, Nan, it—hurts me so to be near you now loving you as I do?"

"But you're wrong!" she cried passionately. "I was wrong! I've loved you all the time, and I didn't know it until I felt you drawing away from me. If I hadn't been sure before, I was sure when I thought you had gone forever. Ben knows, too. I was dreadful—I was beside myself almost because he dared be alive, so brutally safe and sound when you were dead!"

"Oh, Nan!" he cried, bewildered. "You are not mistaken?"

She shook her head, crying vehemently:

"No, no, no! I'm not mistaken. You play a mighty part in my happiness. You are all of it!"

"But, Ben! I don't understand"

"Can't you see? It is through Ben that I really have found you. If it had not been for him, perhaps I should not have appreciated your loyalty, your genuine unselfishness, until it was too late. Ben is fine in many ways, and I thought I was in love with him because I am in love with the life