"Reason?" she repeated, with a bitter laugh. "Oh, I have plenty of reasons!" His heart sank for a moment, then went on, evenly. "It's all a mistake--it's never been anything but a mistake. I couldn't leave Grandmother and Aunt Matilda, you know. They need me, and I shouldn't have allowed myself to forget it."
"Yes," Alden agreed, quickly, "I suppose they do need you. I was selfish, perhaps."
Hot words came to her lips but she choked them back. For an instant she was tempted to tell him all she had seen and heard a few days before, to accuse him of disloyalty, and then prove it. Her face betrayed her agitation, but Alden was looking out across the valley, and did not see. In his pocket the letter for Edith lay consciously, as though it were alive.
"It isn't that you don't love me, is it?" he asked, curiously. His masculine vanity had been subtly aroused.
They Part
Rosemary looked him straight in the face. She was white, now, to the lips. "Yes," she lied. "It is that more than anything else."
"Why, my dear girl! I thought----"
"So did I. We were both mistaken, that is all."
"And you really don't love me?"
"Not in the least."
Alden laughed--a little mirthless, mocking laugh. It is astonishing, sometimes, how deeply a man may be hurt through his vanity. Rosemary had turned away, and he called her back.
"Won't you kiss me good-bye?" he asked, with a new humility.
Then Rosemary laughed, too, but her laugh was also mirthless. "No," she answered, in a tone from which there was no appeal. "Why should I?" Before he realised it, she was gone.
He went back to the log and sat down to think. This last tryst with Rosemary had been a surprise in more ways than one. He had been afraid that she would be angry, or hurt, and she had been neither. He had come to ask for freedom and she had given it to him without asking, because she could not leave Grandmother and Aunt Matilda, and because she did not love him. He could understand the first reason, but the latter seemed very strange. Yet Rosemary had looked him straight in the face and he had never known her to lie. He had a new emotion toward her; not exactly respect, but something more than that.
A Letter for Edith
Then, with a laugh, he straightened his shoulders. He had what he wanted, though it had not come in the way he thought it would. If he had been obliged to ask her to release him, he would have felt worse than he did now. The letter in his pocket, heavy with portent, asserted itself imperiously. He hurried home, feeling very chivalrous.