Free The Reef by Edith Wharton Page B

made his offense seem more venial than he had thought it a moment before.
     
      He drew up a chair and sat down beside her. "After all," he said, in a tone of good-humoured protest, "I needn't have told you I'd kept back your letter; and my telling you seems rather strong proof that I hadn't any very nefarious designs on you."
     
      She met this with a shrug, but he did not give her time to answer. "My designs," he continued with a smile, "were not nefarious. I saw you'd been through a bad time with Mrs. Murrett, and that there didn't seem to be much fun ahead for you; and I didn't see--and I don't yet see--the harm of trying to give you a few hours of amusement between a depressing past and a not particularly cheerful future." He paused again, and then went on, in the same tone of friendly reasonableness: "The mistake I made was not to tell you this at once--not to ask you straight out to give me a day or two, and let me try to make you forget all the things that are troubling you. I was a fool not to see that if I'd put it to you in that way you'd have accepted or refused, as you chose; but that at least you wouldn't have mistaken my intentions.--Intentions!" He stood up, walked the length of the room, and turned back to where she still sat motionless, her elbows propped on the dressing-table, her chin on her hands. "What rubbish we talk about intentions! The truth is I hadn't any: I just liked being with you. Perhaps you don't know how extraordinarily one can like being with you...I was depressed and adrift myself; and you made me forget my bothers; and when I found you were going--and going back to dreariness, as I was- I didn't see why we shouldn't have a few hours together first; so I left your letter in my pocket."
     
      He saw her face melt as she listened, and suddenly she unclasped her hands and leaned to him.
     
      "But are you unhappy too? Oh, I never understood--I never dreamed it! I thought you'd always had everything in the world you wanted!"
     
      Darrow broke into a laugh at this ingenuous picture of his state. He was ashamed of trying to better his case by an appeal to her pity, and annoyed with himself for alluding to a subject he would rather have kept out of his thoughts. But her look of sympathy had disarmed him; his heart was bitter and distracted; she was near him, her eyes were shining with compassion--he bent over her and kissed her hand.
     
      "Forgive me--do forgive me," he said.
     
      She stood up with a smiling head-shake. "Oh, it's not so often that people try to give me any pleasure--much less two whole days of it! I sha'n't forget how kind you've been. I shall have plenty of time to remember. But this IS good- bye, you know. I must telegraph at once to say I'm coming."
     
      "To say you're coming? Then I'm not forgiven?"
     
      "Oh, you're forgiven--if that's any comfort."
     
      "It's not, the very least, if your way of proving it is to go away!"
     
      She hung her head in meditation. "But I can't stay.--How can I stay?" she broke out, as if arguing with some unseen monitor.
     
      "Why can't you? No one knows you're here...No one need ever know."
     
      She looked up, and their eyes exchanged meanings for a rapid minute. Her gaze was as clear as a boy's. "Oh, it's not that," she exclaimed, almost impatiently; "it's not people I'm afraid of! They've never put themselves out for me--why on earth should I care about them?"
     
      He liked her directness as he had never liked it before. "Well, then, what is it? Not me, I hope?"
     
      "No, not you: I like you. It's the money! With me that's always the root of the matter. I could never yet afford a treat in my life!"
     
      Is that all?" He laughed, relieved by her naturalness. "Look here; since we re talking as man to man--can't you trust me about that too?"
     
      "Trust you? How do you mean? You'd