Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/290

282 'He can't go any further? Perhaps,' I replied drily. 'But in that case he shouldn't talk of "caring."'

'Oh, but I do, I do.'

I shook my head. 'Not if you're too proud!' On which I turned away, looking round at him again, however, after he had surprised me by a silence that seemed to accept my judgment. Then I saw he had not accepted it; I perceived it indeed to be essentially absurd. He expressed more, on this, than I had yet seen him do—had the queerest, frankest, and, for a young man of his conditions, saddest smile.

'I'm not proud. It isn't in me. If you're not, you're not, you know. I don't think I'm proud enough.'

It came over me that this was, after all, probable; yet somehow I didn't at the moment like him the less for it, though I spoke with some sharpness. 'Then what's the matter with you?'

He took a turn or two about the room, as if what he had just said had made him a little happier. 'Well, how can a man say more?' Then, just as I was on the point of assuring him that I didn't know what he had said, he went on: 'I swore to her that I would never marry. Oughtn't that to be enough?'

'To make her come after you?'

'No—I suppose scarcely that; but to make her feel sure of me—to make her wait.'

'Wait for what?'

'Well, till I come back.'

'Back from where?'

'From Switzerland—haven't I told you? I go there next month with my aunt and my cousin.'

He was quite right about not being proud—this was an alternative distinctly humble.

 II

yet see what it brought forth—the beginning of which was something that, early in the autumn, I learned from poor