"Tell me," she urged, "why wouldn't you take them; you had some reason—I know you had some reason."
"It's because, it's because—" he answered, "when I go and ring door bells, when strange big women come, I get a shy feeling and my knees get sort of weak." Then with a still deeper embarrassment he clung to her hand.
"Twice," he said in the muffled voice of one facing a deeply buried sin, "twice I've just rung the door bell and left the flowers on the step, and run! If they had come quick to the door—I couldn't wait." His voice dropped off. "I didn't have shyness when I was littler," he said. He looked at her with candid eyes, asking for an explanation, but she, in the inexplicable way of grown-ups, only kissed him.
