Juliana's brow furrowed for a moment at this, unsure exactly what he was trying to convey. Clearly not the surface level, not what the words actually meant. What could she possibly have been disappointed about, though? His insights from his letters? She'd always found his points of view fascinating — at first just in the same way she always found anything someone afflicted with lycanthropy said on the subject fascinating, but over the course of their correspondence she'd sought his opinions on things beyond just his own lived experience as well. She'd been expecting him to be disappointed in her, once he pieced it together, but had things swung so far in the opposite direction that he was feeling self-conscious, now?

"Oh, no!" she assured him quickly, still not sure that she'd understood his meaning but forging ahead all the same. "I've always found your theories quite — insightful," she said, after taking a slight pause to choose the right word. Not delightful, which was what had first come to mind — not delightful when what they were talking about a condition that he had never asked for and now had to live with three days a month for the rest of his life. It would have been insensitive to have called it delightful.

"I thought you might be disappointed," she admitted. Disappointed, disbelieving — she had brought one of the letters he'd sent her through Forfang's publishers just in case he demanded evidence. "I wasn't sure about — meeting. But given the — well, given our letters — I thought I owed it to you," she continued, sheepish.