Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/221

 of her tastes, beautiful gifts that provoked from her, in turn, all the little intimacies and tender friendliness of their earlier intercourse.

At one of these tiny crises of mutual restoration, she, sitting alone with him in the drawing-room, suddenly raised her eyes and looked steadily at him.

“You care for me, then, very much?” she said earnestly. “You—you would miss—if things were different? You really count on—on—our marriage? Are you happy?”

A great remorse rose in him. Poor child—poor, young, unknowing creature, that, after all, was only twenty-two! She felt it, then, the strange mist that seemed to muffle his words and actions, to hold him back. And she had given him so much!

He took her hands and drew her to him.

“My dear, dear child,” he said gently, “forgive a selfish middle-aged bachelor