icking out the situation with artificial flowers, trying
to talk even herself into the fancy that Owen, whose name she now made
simple and sweet, might come in upon them at any moment. She felt an
immense need to be understood and justified; she averted her face in
dread from all that she might have to be forgiven. She pressed on her
companion's arm as if to keep her quiet till she should really know, and
then, after a minute, she poured out the clear essence of what in
happier days had been her "secret." "You mustn't think I don't adore him
when I've told him so to his face. I love him so that I'd die for him--I
love him so that it's horrible. Don't look at me therefore as if I had
not been kind, as if I had not been as tender as if he were dying and my
tenderness were what would save him. Look at me as if you believe me, as
if you feel what I've been through. Darling Mrs. Gereth, I could kiss
the ground he walks on. I haven't a rag of pride; I used to have, but
it's gone. I used to have a secret, but every one knows it now, and any
one who looks at me can say, I think, what's the matter with me. It's
not so very fine, my secret, and the less one really says about it the
better; but I want you to have it from me because I was stiff before. I
want you to see for yourself that I've been brought as low as a girl can
very well be. It serves me right," Fleda laughed, "if I was ever proud
and horrid to you! I don't know what you wanted me, in those days at
Ricks, to do, but I don't think you can have wanted much more than what
I've done. The other day at Maggie's I did things that made me,
afterwards, think of you! I don't know what girls may do; but if he
doesn't know that there isn't an inch of me that isn't his--!" Fleda
sighed as if she couldn't express it; she piled it up, as she would have
said; holding Mrs. Gereth with dilated eyes, she seemed to sound her for
the effect of these words. "It's idiotic," she wearily smiled; "it's so
strange that I'm almost angry for it, and the strangest part of all is
that it isn't even happiness. It's anguish--it was from the first; from
the first there was a bitterness and a kind of dread. But I owe you
every word of the truth. You don't do him justice, either: he's a dear,
I assure you he's a dear. I'd trust him to the last breath; I don't
think you really know him. He's ever so much cleverer than he makes a
show of; he's remarkable in his own shy way. You told me at Ricks that
you wa