"Are you--one?" he said incredulously.
"Yes"--with an involuntary shudder--"not that way. It is easier for me; I think it is--I know it is. But there are things to combat--impulses, a recklessness, perhaps something almost ruthless. What else I do not know, for I have never experienced violent emotions of any sort--never even deep emotion."
"You are in love!"
"Yes, thoroughly," she added with conviction, "but not violently. I--" she hesitated, stopped short, leaning forward, peering at him through the dusk; and: "Mr. Siward! are you laughing?" She rose and he stood up instantly.
There was lightning in her darkening eyes now; in his something that glimmered and danced. She watched it, fascinated, then of a sudden the storm broke and they were both laughing convulsively, face to face there under the stars.
"Mr. Siward," she breathed, "I don't know what I am laughing at; do you? Is it at you? At myself? At my poor philosophy in shreds and tatters? Is it some infernal mirth that you seem to be able to kindle in me--for I never knew a man like you before?"
"You don't know what you were laughing at?" he repeated. "It was something about love--"
"No I don't know why I laughed! I--I don't wish to, Mr. Siward. I do not desire to laugh at anything you have made me say--anything you may infer--"
"I don't infer--"
"You do! You made me say something--about my being ignorant of deep, of violent emotion, when I had just informed you that I am thoroughly, thoroughly in love--"
"Did I make you say all that, Miss Landis?"
"You did. Then you laughed and made me laugh too. Then you--"
"What did I do then?" he asked, far too humbly.
"You--you infer that I am either not in love or incapable of it, or too ignorant of it to know what I'm talking about. That, Mr. Siward, is what you have done to me to-night."
"I--I'm sorry--"
"Are you?"
"I ought to be anyway," he said.
It was unfortunate; an utterly inexcusable laughter seemed to bewitch them, hovering always close to his lips and hers.
"How can you laugh!" she said. "How dare you! I don't care for you nearly as violently as I did, Mr. Siward. A friendship between us would not be at all good for me. Things pass too swiftly--too intimately. There is too much mockery in you--" She ceased suddenly, watching the sombre alteration of his face; and, "Have I hurt you?" she asked penitently.
"No."
"Have I, Mr. Siward? I did not mean it." The attitude, the words, slackening to a trailing sweetness, and then the moment's silence, stirred him.