"
He murmured the quotation to himself, but loud enough to be heard by
sharp ears. Miss Kavanagh was mollified.
"You were in love with my mother, weren't you?" she questioned him
kindly.
"Yes, I suppose I was," mused Abner, still with his gaze upon the
curling smoke.
"What do you mean by 'you suppose you were'?" snapped Ann. "Didn't
you know?"
The tone recalled him from his dreams.
"I was in love with your mother very much," he corrected himself,
turning to her with a smile.
"Then why didn't you marry her?" asked Ann. "Wouldn't she have
you?"
"I never asked her," explained Abner.
"Why not?" persisted Ann, returning to asperity.
He thought a moment.
"You wouldn't understand," he told her.
"Yes, I would," retorted Ann.
"No, you wouldn't," he contradicted her quite shortly. They were
both beginning to lose patience with one another. "No woman ever
could."
"I'm not a woman," explained Ann, "and I'm very smart. You've said
so yourself."
"Not so smart as all that," growled Abner. "Added to which, it's
time for you to go to bed."
Her anger with him was such that it rendered her absolutely polite.
It had that occasional effect upon her. She slid from the arm of
his chair and stood beside him, a rigid figure of frozen femininity.
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