"No," he said gently and kindly. "I don't see; I don't understand you."
She saw and felt the change in him; but she was on guard against a
reaction. He could not know how her heart throbbed, or how it had seemed
for a moment that words would not come to her lips.
"It is to you; it is to yourself that you must make the reparation. And
you must make it now. There may never be a time like this; it is your
great opportunity."
"You think, you ask--" he began warily; and she was quick to see that
the precise moment for the full stroke had not come; that the ground
required preparation.
"I think," she interrupted, smiling gravely, "that you want me to be
your friend. More than that, we have long been friends. And deep down in
your heart I believe you want my regard; you want me to think well of
you. And I must tell you that there's a kind of happiness--for it must
be happiness--that comes to me at the thought of it. Something there is
between you and me that is different; somehow we understand each other."
His response was beyond anything she had hoped for; a light shone
suddenly in his face. There was no doubt of the sincerity of the feeling
with which he replied:--
"Yes; I have felt it; I felt it the first day we met!"
"And because there is this understanding, this tie, I dare to be frank
with you: I mean to make your reparation difficult.
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