f-possessed kindliness with which he had met
her unreasoning rage the night before.

"You don't have to explain," he told her, "unless you are sure you want
to. Sometimes, you see, I understand things without any special
explanation. It's a trick one learns from living alone a lot with
one's own thoughts. I told you, last night, that I wouldn't have you
saying 'I'm sorry' to me. And now I'll tell you that nothing you can
ever say, now, is going to stop me from----"

"I want to, please," she interrupted him vehemently. "I--have to! And
I'm not going to make believe that I don't know what you are going to
tell me--what you have been saying to me, all morning. But it can't do
any good. Why, I'm just realizing that something which has been
hurting me for hours was just--just sorrow for you. It can't do any
good, oh, truly! But will you let me talk first, if I promise to
listen afterward?"

He promised.

"Twice I've been bitterly unkind to you," she began again. "Once a
long time ago--and--and once last night. And on both occasions you had
just tried to tell me, indirectly at least, that you cared, hadn't you?"

"Indirectly?" he murmured. "Was I as obscure as that?" And then,
whimsically: "Won't you call that explanation enough, and let me tell
it to you again--so you can't misunderstand?"

"I've asked you to forgive me the first offense," she hurriedly denied
his appeal. "And the second--Mr. O'Mara, last night Miriam said
something to me, something that she wouldn't have said if she hadn't
been half mad with fear. It was unkind, unfair, but it made me wonder
if, perhaps, you might not be thinking the same thing, too. Years ago
you told me I didn't think you good enough to--to be my knight. My
outburst was only childish temper that day, but did you think last
night that I still underrated you?"

Steve finally shook his head when she persisted in waiting for his
answer.

"You just have to finish now," he warned her, however. "It was your
own bargain. I'm not going to tell you one single bit of what I think
of you until it comes my turn!"

She tried to laugh at his stubbornness, but she had trouble with this
explanation, which grew more vexingly intricate and involved the
further she went.

"Then we'll say you didn't," she continued. "I told you last night,
less kindly than I might have, that I was engaged to Mr. Wickersham.
And I've just confessed, too, that I didn't know a girl could care fo