It would all be her fault if she had
deceived him, though ever so unwittingly.

His hands shook a little as they lay on hers. Then they took one of hers
and held it, drawing it slowly away from the other.

"Do you really love me?" Guido asked, still wondering, and not quite
convinced.

"Yes," she answered faintly, and not trying to withdraw her hand.

She had been really happy before she had first answered him. A minute
had not passed, and her martyrdom had begun, the martyrdom by the doubt
which made that one "yes" possibly a lie. Guido raised her hand to his
lips, and she felt that they were cold. Then he began to speak, and she
heard his voice far off and as if it came to her through a dense mist.

"I have loved you almost since we first met," he said, "but I was sure
from the beginning that you would never feel anything but friendship for
me."

A voice that was neither his nor hers, cried out in her heart:

"Nor ever can!"

She almost believed that he could hear the words. She would have given
all she had to have the strength to speak them, to disappoint him
bravely, to tell him that she had meant to do right, but had done wrong.
But she could not. He did not pause as he spoke, and his soft, deep
voice poured into her ear unceasingly the pent-up thoughts of love that
had been gathering in his heart for weeks. She knew that he was looking
in her face for some response, and now and then, as her head lay back
against the sofa cushion, she turned her eyes to his and smiled, and
twice she felt that her fingers pressed his hand a little.

It was not out of mere weakness that she did not interrupt him, for she
was not weak, nor cowardly. She had been so sure that she loved him,
until he had made her say so, that even now, whenever she could think at
all, she went back to her reasoning, and could all but persuade herself
again. It was when she was obliged to speak that her lips almost refused
the word.

For she was very fond of him. It would have been pleasant to sit there,
and even to press his hand affectionately, and to listen to his words,
if only they had been words of friendship and not of love, and spoken in
another tone--in his voice of every day. But she had waked in him
something she could not understand, and to which nothing in herself
responded, nothing thrilled, nothing consented; and the inner voice in
her heart cried out perpetually, warning her against something unknown.

He was eloquent now, an