"All?"
"Yes. I wanted to know just how much you have to forgive me." She
looked at him stupefied. "Yes, I ought to have let you tell me all this
before, when you wanted to, at first. But I have been a romantic fool,
and I have made you suffer for my folly. I have left you to think, all
the time, that I might care for this; that I might not know that you
were yourself through it all, or that I could care for you any the less
because of it, when it only makes you dearer to me."
"No!" she said for all protest, and he understood.
"Oh, I don't mean that you were always right in it, or always wise; but
I can truly say it makes no difference with me except to make you
dearer. If I had always had more sense than I had, you would not have
to blame yourself for the only wrong or unwise thing you have done, and
I am really to blame for that."
She knew that he meant her having taken refuge from his apparent
indifference in Dickerson, when she fell below her ideal of herself.
This was what she had thought at the time; it was the thought with
which she had justified herself then, and she could not deny it now.
She loved him for taking her blame away, and she said to strengthen
herself for her doom, "Well, it is all over!"
"No," he said, "why is it over? Don't be worse than I was. Let us be
reasonable about it! Why shouldn't we talk of it as if we were other
people? Do you mean it is all over because you think I must be troubled
by what you've told me, or because you can't forgive me for not letting
you tell me before?"
"You know which!" she said.
"Well, then, what should you think of some other man if he could care
for such a thing, when some other girl had told it him of herself? You
would think him very unjust and----"
"But it isn't some other man; it isn't some other girl!"
"No, I'm glad it isn't. But can't we reason about it as if it were?"
"No, we can't. It would be--wicked."
"It would be wicked not to. Do you think you ought to break our
engagement because I didn't let you tell me this at first?"
Cornelia could not say that she did; she could hardly say, "I don't
know."
Ludlow assumed that she had said more. "Then if you don't think you
ought to do it for that, do you think you ought to do it for nothing?"
"For nothing?" Cornelia asked herself. Was there really nothing else,
then? She stood looking at him, as if she were asking him that aloud.
He was not so far off as when they began to talk, just after they had
risen, and now he suddenly came much nearer still.
"Are you going to drive me from you because I don't care for all this?"
"You ought to care," she persisted.
"But if I don't? If I can't? Then what is the reason you won't let it
all be as if nothing had happened? Ah, I see! You can't forgive me for
sending you his letter! Well, I deserve to be punished for that!"
"No; I should have despised you if you hadn't----"
"Well?"
She was silent, looking at the floor. He put his arm round her, and
pushed her head down on his shoulder. "Oh, how silly!" she said, with
lips muted against his own.