Never must there be again
that electric current between them. "But you're all right now, aren't you,
Gil?"
He seemed abstracted, suddenly lost in another world. "Huh?" he uttered.
Then, as if coming to himself, "Oh, my, yes! I'm doing splendidly now,
Lucia!"
"I'm so glad, Gil. But you haven't answered my question yet."
"About my not coming to say good-bye?"
She nodded.
"It was pride, I suppose," he went on.
"Very foolish pride. And life is so short. You hurt me a great deal."
"I'm sorry. What more can one say? If I--"
"I thought I had done something to offend you," she said, standing very
still, and looking far beyond him now, as though viewing their whole
unhappy past. "And it's worried me even until this very day. I didn't do
anything to offend you, did I, Gil?"
"You? You, Lucia?" he cried. "You couldn't do anything to offend me. Surely
you must know that." He said it as a man says such things to the one woman
he loves.
"It was only pride?" she was anxious to know again. "Because you were poor!
Gil! Did you think so little of me as that?" There was a half-sob in her
voice.
"I hoped to pick a fortune off a tree somewhere, and come back and surprise
you with it.
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