Heade A Magnolia on Red Velvet painting

``Ah, I don't understand you!''
She forced a pitiful smile that pinched her face instead of smoothing it. ``You don't understand because you haven't yet guessed how you've changed things for me: oh, from the first -- long before I knew all you'd done.''
``All I'd done?''
``Yes. I was perfectly unconscious at first that people here were shy of me -- that they thought I was a dreadful sort of person. It seems they had even refused to meet me at dinner. I found that out afterward; and how you'd made your mother go with you to the van der Luydens'; and how you'd insisted on announcing your engagement at the Beaufort ball, so that I might have two families to stand by me instead of one -- ''
At that he broke into a laugh.
``Just imagine,'' she said, ``how stupid and unobservant I was! I knew nothing of all this till Granny blurted it out one day. New York simply meant peace and freedom to me: it was coming home. And I was so happy at being among my own people that every one I met seemed kind and good, and glad to see me. But from the very beginning,'' she continued, ``I felt there was no one as kind as you; no one who gave me reasons that I understood for doing what at first seemed so hard and -- unnecessary. The very good people didn't convince me; I