me away
feeling like a cur because I had not spoken to her father. Her people met
me in the cordial, honest manner of those who have faith in mankind, but I
couldn't look them in the face without flinching.

"Since I came back, of course, I've been visiting Louise as usual. I told
her all about the rice and flowers, thinking that if she quarrelled with
me about the affair she would break off the engagement. But she only
laughed and said it served me right for flirting with every girl that came
along, and didn't even reproach me. She has absolute faith in me. She
doesn't believe I could sink so low as I have, any more than she could.
She has idealized me until I don't dare to breathe for fear of destroying
the illusion. She thinks that I love her in the way she loves me, but I
couldn't. It isn't in me, Ruth. I don't even love Frankie that way. To
tell the truth, Louise is too good for me. She is magnificent, but I am
rather afraid of her. She has so many ideals and is so intense. Her faith
in me makes me shiver. I am not a bit comfortable with her. I do not even
understand how she can love me so much. I am nothing extraordinary, but if
you knew the way she treats me, you would think I was Achilles or some of
those Greek fellows. She has refused better and richer men than I. Norris
Whitehouse has loved her all her life, and you know what a splendid man he
is, but Louise ridicules the idea of ever caring for anybody but me. She
is so perfect that there is absolutely no flaw in her for me to recognize
and feel friendly with. She reads me like a book, but I am less acquainted
with her than I was before we were engaged. She says such beautiful things
to me sometimes, things that are far beyond my comprehension, and she can
get so uplifted that I feel as if I never had met her. There's no use in
talking; after a girl falls in love with a man she often ceases to be the
girl he courted."

I recalled what I had said to Percival--"Often a woman denies herself the
expression of the best part of her love, for fear that it will be either
a puzzle or a terror to her lover." Such a saying belonged to Percival.
I shouldn't think of repeating it to Charlie, for he could not comprehend
it. I should puzzle him as much as Louise did. It made me heartsick. How
could even Charlie Hardy so persistently misunderstand the grandeur of
Louise King? Yet how could such a glorious girl imagine herself in love
with nice, weak, agreeable Charlie Hardy?