Page:Glimpses of the Moon (Wharton 1922).djvu/277

Rh "It doesn't so much matter about the how. Is that what you're trying to say?"

Her head drooped, and she saw the dead leaves whirling across the path at her feet, lifted on a sudden wintry gust.

"The reason," he continued, clearing his throat with a stiff smile, "is not quite as important to me as the fact."

She stood speechless, agonized by his pain. But still, she thought, he had remembered the dinner at the Embassy. The thought gave her courage to go on.

"It wouldn't do, Streff. I'm not a bit the kind of person to make you happy."

"Oh, leave that to me, please, won't you?"

"No, I can't. Because I should be unhappy too."

He clicked at the leaves as they whirled past. "You've taken a rather long time to find it out." She saw that his new-born sense of his own consequence was making him suffer even more than his wounded affection; and that again gave her courage.

"If I've taken long it's all the more reason why I shouldn't take longer. If I've made a mistake it's you who would have suffered from it. "

"Thanks," he said, "for your extreme solicitude."

She looked at him helplessly, penetrated by the despairing sense of their inaccessibility to each