and laughed. "You wouldn't say 'it was me,' would you?"
He joined merrily in her laughter. "I never corrected you on that."
"You never did, but you didn't need to. I often know, after I've said something—not—right—as you would say it."
"Do you, indeed?" he walked nearer, boyishly happy because she was close beside him. He wanted to touch her, to take her hand and walk as children do, but could not because of the subtile barrier he felt between them. He determined to break it down. "Finish what you were saying? And then it was me—what?"
"And then it was I who gave out, not you."
"But you were a heroine—a heroine from the ground up, and I love you." He spoke with such boyish impulsiveness that she took the remark as one of his extravagances, and merely smiled indulgently, as if amused at it. She did not even flush, but accepted it as she would an outburst from Hoyle.
David was amazed. It only served to show him how completely outside that charmed circle within which she lived he still was. He was maddened by it. He came nearer and bent to look in her face, until she lifted her eyes to look fairly in his.
"That's right. Look at me and understand me. I waited there only that I might tell you. Why do you put a wall between us? I