Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/366

356 From which it is plainly to be seen that Susan did not yet know men analytically. She was yet too much under the influence of the presence of an idealist who could talk eloquently and mysteriously on the subject of unconquerable passions. Susan made several blundering attempts to make Tom see what she wanted him to see; but Tom was obtuse; he was basking in the sun of Susan's presence, and not acknowledging to himself distinctly that he wanted her for his wife. Susan was right in one respect: Tom was quite capable of leaving off loving her if he resolved to. But it would take more to make him resolve to than Susan supposed. At last, one day, in one of those sudden, unpremeditated, accidental moments which are always happening between men and women whose relations are not clear, there came a chance for Susan to say,—exactly what she never knew, and Tom never could tell her, but something which made Tom understand clearly that she wanted to save him from falling in love with her.

Tom looked at her for one second with a gaze which was stern in its intensity; then he said:— "You 're a good, kind, true girl, Sue. Don't you worry about me. I 'm all right."

And poor Susan was seized with the most mortifying fear that she had spoken needlessly. "Oh, dear!" she thought, "if it were anybody but Tom, how I should feel! But he is so good, he 'd never misunderstand a woman nor laugh at her!"