Suddenly she sank down, kneeling, with her face buried in her arms upon the lap of a chair, tears overwhelming her.

“Mary, Mary!” he cried, helplessly.  “Oh no—­you—­you don’t understand.”

“I do, though!” she sobbed.  “I do!”

He came and stood beside her.  “You kill me!” he said.  “I can’t make it plain.  From the first of your loveliness to me, I was all self.  It was always you that gave and I that took.  I was the dependent—­I did nothing but lean on you.  We always talked of me, not of you.  It was all about my idiotic distresses and troubles.  I thought of you as a kind of wonderful being that had no mortal or human suffering except by sympathy.  You seemed to lean down —­out of a rosy cloud—­to be kind to me.  I never dreamed I could do anything for you!  I never dreamed you could need anything to be done for you by anybody.  And to-day I heard that—­that you—­”

“You heard that I needed to marry—­some one—­anybody—­with money,” she sobbed.  “And you thought we were so—­so desperate—­you believed that I had—­”

“No!” he said, quickly.  “I didn’t believe you’d done one kind thing for me—­for that.  No, no, no!  I knew you’d never thought of me except generously—­to give.  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.  You thought that I was fond of you; you knew I cared for you—­but you didn’t think I might be—­in love with you.  But you thought that I might marry you without being in love with you because you did believe I had tried to marry your brother, and—­”

“Mary, I only knew—­for the first time—­that you—­that you were—­”

“Were desperately poor,” she said.  “You can’t even say that!  Bibbs, it was true:  I did try to make Jim want to marry me.  I did!” And she sank down into the chair, weeping bitterly again.  Bibbs was agonized.

“Mary,” he groaned, “I didn’t know you could cry!”