“Yes, you are my friend, but I cannot feel grateful to you.”
“I know you are an Englishman, and you would sooner die than talk about your private affairs, or carry a brown paper parcel down the street. But I do not care, I want you to be happy. . . . . And I have made mistakes myself. You can’t get some things right in a whole lifetime. Do not make a mistake now.”
He was still silent, and after waiting a moment for him to respond, she went on with a certain tremor in her voice: “Carrie says that there has been a misunderstanding between you two. If so, perhaps I can put it right. They say that fools rush in, you know, and I dare say that I am a fool.”
“No, no; you are a good woman, and I believe in you. It is all the fault of this wretched gossiping little hole,” he said at last, with more warmth, moved perhaps more by the little break in her voice than by all her pleadings, “but, as you say, I am not used to talk about this sort of thing.”
“Well, no more am I, if it comes to that. Yet if it would do any good I would tell you all about myself. People say that I married for money, and that my relations forced me into it. That’s not true. I did it with my eyes open. I
