Were people in Boston much excited about the accident?"
She felt herself a hypocrite, yet she could not help this one more
effort to avoid the explanation she dreaded.
"I suppose so. I don't know. I was so taken up with thinking about you,
that I paid very little attention to anything else."
"I'm afraid I didn't deserve it. I wasn't thinking of anybody but
myself. It was very good of you."
"Of course you weren't thinking of anybody," Stanford responded,
pulling his mustache more furiously than ever; "but I was at the club
instead of being in a burning car. I was half crazy at the thought that
my future wife"--
"Stop!" Berenice broke in. "You mustn't say such things. I'm not your
future wife!"
"Forgive me. I know I haven't any right to say that when you haven't
promised; but I can't help thinking of you so, and"--
"Oh, please don't!" she cried.
A wave of humiliation, of repulsion, of terror, swept over her. That
this man had thought of her as his wife seemed almost like an
inexorable bond. She shrank away from him with an impulse too strong
to be controlled.
"But, Berenice, I"--
She sprang up and faced him.
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