" A new experience for that poor, delicate, and yet so resisting
creature. Gentleness in passion! What could have been more seductive to
the scared, starved heart of that girl? Perhaps had he been violent, she
might have told him that what she came down to keep was the tryst of
death--not of love. It occurred to me as I looked at her, young, fragile
in aspect, and intensely alive in her quietness, that perhaps she did not
know herself then what sort of tryst she was coming down to keep.
She smiled faintly, almost awkwardly as if she were totally unused to
smiling, at my cheap jocularity. Then she said with that forced
precision, a sort of conscious primness:
"I didn't want him to know."
I approved heartily. Quite right. Much better. Let him ever remain
under his misapprehension which was so much more flattering for him.
I tried to keep it in the tone of comedy; but she was, I believe, too
simple to understand my intention. She went on, looking down.
"Oh! You think so? When I saw you I didn't know why you were here. I
was glad when you spoke to me because this is exactly what I wanted to
ask you for.
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