MISS REGAN WILL MARRY
309
because of your father, I think, that I got started wrong. I saw how anxious you made him, how you troubled him, and it made me think you were not—not worthy of his love, just foolish, reckless. Once I thought this, it made it easy to keep on such thinking—to see in everything you did or tried to do, or proposed doing, just the act of a notoriety-mad"
His lips refused the word.
"Say it!" she commanded. "You mean you thought I was a fool."
"Yes—that is what I thought; and that is what I tried to think. Many times I have deliberately told myself that, when some other reason suggested itself to me for your acts. Often I wrote you as though you were only that. I was—I see now I tried to be—just like everybody else; I saw no more than
