u. You wonder that
I can show you my heart this way? I couldn't of course,
except--well--that it is all past now. And that is what seems sad to
me.... There never was any prince; my knight is dead; and Sir Galahad I
got out of a book.... Don't you think that that is pretty sad?"

West, who had been looking at her with a kind of frightened fascination,
hastily averted his eyes, for he saw that her own had suddenly filled
with tears. She turned away from him again; a somewhat painful silence
ensued; and presently she broke it, speaking in a peculiarly gentle
voice, and not looking at him.

"I'm glad that you told me--at last. I'll be glad to remember that ...
and I'm always your friend. But don't you think that perhaps we'd better
finish our talk some other time?"

"No," said West. "No."

He pulled himself together, struggling desperately to throw off the
curious benumbing inertia that was settling down upon him. "You are
doing me an injustice. A most tremendous injustice. You have
misunderstood everything from the beginning. I must explain--"

"Don't you think that argument will only make it all so much worse?"

"Nothing could possibly be worse for me than to have you think of me and
speak to me in this way."

Obediently she sat down, her face still and sad; and West, pausing a
moment to marshal his thoughts into convincing form, launched forth upon
his defense.

From the first he felt that he did not make a success of it; was not
doing himself justice. Recent events, in the legislature and with
reference to Meachy T. Bangor, had greatly weakened his confidence in
his arguments. Even to himself he seemed to have been strangely "easy";
his exposition sounded labored and hollow in his own ears. But worse
than this was the bottomless despondency into which the girl's brief
autobiography had strangely cast him. A vast mysterious depression had
closed over him, which entirely robbed him of his usual adroit felicity
of speech. He brought his explanation up to the publication of the
unhappy article, and there abruptly broke off.

A long silence followed his ending, and at last Sharlee said:--

"I suppose a sudden change of heart in the middle of a fight is always
an unhappy thing. It always means a good deal of pain for somebody.
Still--sometimes they must come, and when they do, I suppose the only
thing to do is to meet them honestly--though, personally, I think I
should always trust my heart against my head. But .