Page:The plastic age, (IA plasticage00mark).pdf/347

Rh of, but to mention them meant an argument—and an argument would have been unendurable.

“No,” she repeated, “I don’t love you. You see, you ’re so different from what I remembered. You’ve grown up and you’ve changed. Why, Hugh, we ’re strangers. I’ve realized that while you’ve been talking. We don’t know each other, not a bit. We only saw each other for a week summer before last and for two days last spring. Now we ’re two altogether different people; and we don’t know each other at all.”

She prayed that he would deny her statements, that he would say they knew each other by instinct —anything, so long as he did not agree. ^

“I certainly don’t know you the way you ’re talk¬ ing now,” he said almost roughly, his pride hurt and his mind in a turmoil. “I know that we don’t know each other, but I never thought that you thought that mattered. _

Her hands clenched more tightly for an instant —and then lay open and limp in her lap.

Her lips were trembling; so she smiled. i didn’t think it mattered until you asked me to marry you. Then I knew it did. It was game or you to offer to take a chance, but I’m not that game. I couldn’t marry a strange man. 1 like that man a lot, but I don’t love him-and you don t want me to marry you if I don’t love you, do you, Hugh?”