"The reason is everything, John. I didn't know the reason myself for a good bit--the reason why I held away from you; and when I did, I was so put about that it seemed to alter my whole nature and make me shamed of being alive." "That's pretty strong. Better we don't go back then. I'll ask no questions and forget. We'll begin again by getting married." "No; the reason you've got to hear, worse luck. The reason why I behaved so strange was this, John: I'd made a terrible mistake--terrible for both of us. I thought the love that I had for you, and still have for you, and always shall, was the love of a woman for the man she's going to wed. Then, like a cloud, it came over me, denser and denser, that it was not. Listen--you must listen. I examined into it--give me that credit--I examined into it with all my senses tingling night and day. I never worked so hard about anything after I'd got over my first fright. And then I saw I'd slipped into this, being young and very ignorant about love--much more so than many girls younger than me; because I never was interested in men in the way they are. I found that out by talking to girls, and by the things they said when they knew I was tokened to you. They looked at marriage quite different from me, and they showed me that love is another thing altogether seen that way than as I'd seen it. They made me terrible uncomfortable, because I found they'd got a deep understanding that I had not got about it; and they laughed at me, when I talked, and said I didn't know what love meant. And--and--I didn't, Johnny. That's the naked truth." He was looking at her with a flushed face. "Get on--get on to the end of it," he said. "Be patient. I'm bitter sorry. We was boy and girl for so many years, and I loved you well enough and always shall; but I don't know nothing about the sort of love you've got for me. The first I heard about it was from Jane. She knows. She understands far deeper about what love is than I do. I only know I haven't got it, and what I thought was it didn't belong to that sort of love at all. Haven't you seen? Haven't you fretted sometimes--many times--because I couldn't catch fire same as you, when you touched me and put your arms round me? Didn't it tell you nothing?" "How the devil should it? Women are different from men." "Not they--not if they love proper. But how could you know that--you, who was never in love before? I don't blame you there; but if you'd only compare notes with other men." "Men don't compare notes as you call it about sacred things like love." "Don't they? Then they're finer than us. Women do. Anyway I found out, to my cruel cost, I was only half-fledged so far as you were concerned."