"I am so sorry," Bertha Greendale said, "so awfully sorry.

I had no idea that you thought of me like that.

We were such friends so long ago, and it has been so pleasant since you came home last year, and I like you as if you were a big brother; but I have never thought of you in any other light, and now it seems dreadful to me to give you pain; but I feel sure that I should never come to love you in that way." And she burst into tears.
"Do not think anything more about it, dear," Frank Mallett said, gently.

"I have felt sometimes when we have been together, that you were so kindly and frank and pleasant with me that you could feel as I wanted you to.

I ought to have known it always.