Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/33

Rh "Exactly." "But even so—if you believed it—but how could you? Even so—why not have told me—why not have given me a chance?" His voice trembled.

Hers was firm.

"I was giving you a chance, and I wanted to make sure that you would take it. If I'd just said, 'You don't care for me,' you'd have said, 'Oh, yes I do!' And we should have been just where we were before."

"Then it wasn't that you were tired of me?"

"Oh, no," she said sedately, "it wasn't that!"

"Then you—did you really care for me still, even when you sent back the ring and wouldn't see me, and went to Germany, and wouldn't open my letters, and all the rest of it?"

"Oh, yes!"—she laughed lightly—"I loved you frightfully all that time. It does seem odd now to look back on it, doesn't it? but I nearly broke my heart over you."

"Then why the devil—"

"You mustn't swear," she interrupted; "I never heard you do that before. Is it the Indian climate?"