"I do."
His words were so low that it was permissible for her not to hear them.
Perhaps she meant at first to make use of this privilege, but when a
minute or more had gone by she said: "What for?"
"Partly for the penalties I've had to pay, but chiefly for deserving
them."
It seemed to him that her profile grew pensive. Though it detached
itself clearly enough against the pane, it was a soft profile, a little
blurred in the outline, with delicate curves of nose and lips and
chin--the profile to go with dimpling smiles and a suffused sweetness.
It pained him to notice that, though the suffused sweetness and the
dimpling smiles were still as he remembered them, they didn't keep out
of her face certain lines that had not been there when he saw her last.
"I think I ought to tell you," she said, after long reflection, "that I
understand that sort of sympathy better now than I did some years ago.
One grows more tolerant, if that's the right word, as one grows older."
"Does that mean that if certain things were to do again--you wouldn't do
them?"