I said I couldn't make it plain!" he cried, despairingly.
"Wait!" She lifted her head and extended her hands to him unconsciously, like a child.

"Help me up, Bibbs." Then, when she was once more upon her feet, she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him ruefully and faintly, but reassuringly, as if to tell him, in that way, that she knew he had not meant to hurt her.

And that smile of hers, so lamentable, but so faithfully friendly, misted his own eyes, for his shamefacedness lowered them no more.
"Let me tell you what you want to tell me," she said.

"You can't, because you can't put it into words--they are too humiliating for me and you're too gentle to say them.

Tell me, though, isn't it true?
You didn't believe that I'd tried to make you fall in love with me--" "Never! Never for an instant!" "You didn't believe I'd tried to make you want to marry me--" "No, no, no!" "I believe it, Bibbs.