“She meant well—­”

“Oh, every failure, and bungler, and mischief-maker means well.  That’s their charter.  I’m not concerned with that.  I’m speaking of what she did.  She fixed it in your mind that you were like a sapling sprung from a seed blown outside the orchard.  You think you can minimize that accident by bringing forth as good as any to be found within the pale.  Consequently you’ve taken a poor, helpless, blind man off the hands of the people whose duty it is to look after him—­and who are well able to do it—­”

“That isn’t the reason,” she declared, flushing.  “If Mr. Wayne and I live together it’s because we’re used to each other—­and in a way he has taken the place of my father.”

“Oh, come now!  That’s all very fine.  But haven’t you got in the back of your mind the thought that the wild tree that’s known by its good fruit is the one that’s best worth grafting?”

“If I had—­” she began, with color deepening.

“If you had, you’d simply be taking a long way round, when there’s a short cut home.  I’m the orchard, Miriam.  All you’ve got to do is to walk into it—­with me.”

A warmer tone came into his voice as he uttered the concluding words, adding to her discomfort.  She moved the tea-things about, putting them into an unnecessary state of order, before she could reply.

“There’s a reason why I couldn’t do that,” she said, meeting his sharp eyes with one of her fugitive glances.  “I would have given it to you when—­when you brought up this subject last spring, only you didn’t ask me.”

“Well, what is it?”

“I couldn’t love you.”

She forced herself to bring out the words distinctly.  He leaned back in his chair, threw one leg across the other, and stroked the thin, colorless line of his mustache.

“No, I suppose you couldn’t,” he said, quietly, after considering her words.

“So that my answer has to be final.”

“I don’t see that.  Love is only one of the many motives for marriage—­and not, as I understand it, the highest one.  The divorce courts are strewn with the wrecks of marriages made for love.  Those that stand the test of life and time are generally those that have been contracted from some of the more solid—­and worthier—­motives.”

“Then I don’t know what they are.”

“I could explain them to you if you’d let me.  As for love—­if it’s needed at all—­I could bring enough into hotch-potch as the phrase goes, to do for two.  I’m over fifty years of age.  It never occurred to me that you could—­care about me—­as you might have cared for some one else.  But as far as I can see, there’s no one else.  If there was, perhaps I shouldn’t persist.”

She looked up with sudden determination.

“If there was any one else, you—­would consider that as settling the question?”

“I might.  I shouldn’t bind myself.  It would depend.”

“Then I’ll tell you; there is some one else.”  The words caused her to flush so painfully that she hastened to qualify them.  “That is, there might have been.”