g entertained
toward him, she didn't want to hurt him now; perhaps not strangely,
remembering that this proposal of marriage was a direct, down-right
protestation of implicit faith in her, uttered squarely on top of a
most damnable indictment--remembering, too, that it was barely
two hours since Sally herself had been ready, almost eager, to believe
him capable of committing the very crime of implication in which he
exonerated her without an instant's hesitation.

True, she had been quick to exonerate him in her thoughts as soon as
the suspicion was engendered in them, but she had done so almost
reluctantly, ungenerously, not because she wanted to believe him
innocent, but because the burden of the evidence, together with the
counsel of instinct, had been too strong in his favour to permit more
than a moment's doubt. And she had repented; but that, it appeared,
was not enough; she must be punished in this unique way, have her own
unworthiness demonstrated by this artless manifestation of his worth.
And however much she might long to make amends to him, she couldn't.

The pain and the pity of it! He was a far better man than she a woman,
and he honoured her with his love--and she couldn't requite him, she
couldn't love him; he was still too far from the mirage of her ideal.

"Oh!" she sighed. "Why?"

He misconstrued. "I've told you heaps of times--because you're a
woman, not a manikin. Marriage would mean something more to you than
clothes, Europe, idleness, and flirting with other women's
husbands, just as it would have to mean more to me than hiring a woman
to live with me and entertain my friends."

"How do you know? How can you tell? What do you know about me?" she
protested almost passionately, and answered herself. "You don't know;
you can't tell; you know nothing about me. You assert things--I only
wish they were true--"

"Oh, they're true enough," he interrupted unceremoniously. "It's no
use trying to run yourself down to me. I couldn't feel the way I do
about you if you were not at heart as sound as an apple, no matter
what nonsense you may have been guilty of at one time or another, as
every human being's got to be."

"Has nobody told you anything about me? Mrs. Gosnold--?"

"Mrs. Gosnold 'tends to her own knitting. And nobody has told me
anything--except yourself. More than that, I don't go by other folks'
opinions when I make up my mind about a matter as vital to me as
marrying a wife."

"Then I m