"I thought of
course you knowd all about it, and when I seen them up there to-night,
her a-holdin' to him so lovin', says I to myself, 'How pleased Mark
will be--he thinks so much of Tim and Mary.'"
Tim's minute! I knew now why it was so long. I should have known it
long ago. I feared to ask Perry what he had seen. I divined it. I
had debated with myself too much the strangeness of Mary's promise, and
often in the last few days there had come over me a vague fear that I
was treading in the clouds. She had told me again and again that she
cared for me more than for anyone else in the world. But that night
when I had asked her if she loved me, she had turned my collar up. I
believed that when she spoke then it was what she thought the truth.
She had pledged herself to me and I had not demanded more. I had been
selfish enough to ask that she link herself to my narrow life, and she
had looked at me clear in the eye. "You are strong, Mark, and good,
and true," she had said, "and in all the world there is none I trust
more.
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