Part 10 (1/2)
Sybarite added sincerely
”You don't believe--really--?”
”Just now? With all my heart! I' is too incredible for ar_ to any codad-on-the-Hudson!”
Again the girl laughed quietly to his humour
”And since you're a true believer, Mr Sybarite, tell me, what use _you_ wouldwistfully, he opened deprecatory palms ”Hard to say I'e's esteem equally with old _Hajj_ I'm sure that, like him, the sunset of my Day would see me proscribed, a price upon my head”
”But--why?”
”I's”
After a pause, she asked diffidently: ”Your own?”
”Perhaps Yes, my own, certainly And perhaps another's, not so old but possibly quite as grievous”
”Soreat deal?”
Thus tardilyhiravely judgmatical
”Perhaps I'd better not say that,” he announced, a grin teo far for a friend, somebody who had been kind to me, and--ah--tolerant--if she were in trouble and could use lance was quick and sharp and searching; but her voice when she spoke was even and lightly attuned to his whimsical mood
”Then you're not even sure she--your friend--is in trouble?”
”I've an intuition: she wouldn't be where she is if she wasn't”
Her laughter at this absurdity was delightful; whether with his
”But--seriously--you're not sure, are you, Mr Sybarite?”
”Only, Miss Lessing,” he said soberly, ”of ood will”
She seemed to start to speak, to think better of it, to fall silent in sudden, shy constraint He stole a side-long glance, troubled, wondering if perhaps he had ventured too i his whim to the point of trespass upon the inviolable confines of her reserve
She wore a sweet, grave face, _en profile_; her eyes veiled with long lashes, the haunts of tender shadows; her , a little triste Compunctions smote him; with his crude and cluhts to sadness He would have given worlds to undo that blunder; to show her that he had meant neither a rudeness nor a wish to desecrate her reticence, but only an indirect assurance of gratitude to her for suffering hiness to serve her within the compass of his poverty-stricken powers For in retrospect his invitation assuious piece of presuroaned to conteroan, save inwardly; but respected her silence, and held his own in humility and mortification of spirit until they were near the dooryard of their boarding-house And even then it was the girl who loosed his tongue
”Why--where are they?” she asked in surprise
Startled out of the deeps of self-contee, ere nowhere visible
”Violet said soirl