"——I might point out that when I spoke to you first you had not read your father's book, you had not, I believe, even heard of it; that you knew nothing about the Macclesfield Club, and that when I spoke to you about his work amongst the poor you were very much inclined to murmur, 'Can any good come out of Nazareth?'"
"Mr. Kenyon——"
"I beg your pardon, Miss Brooke, but isn't that substantially true? If you can honestly say that it is a misapprehension on my part, I won't say another word. But isn't it all true?"
He turned his eager face and bright blue eyes towards her, and read in her pale, troubled face a little of the conflict that was going on between her candor and her pride. "Now, what will she say?" he thought, with what would have seemed to Lesley incomprehensible anxiety. "On her answer depends my opinion of her, now and for ever."
And this appeared to Maurice quite an important matter, though possibly Lesley might not have thought it so.
She turned to him at last with a frank, decisive gesture.
"It is true," she said. "I knew nothing about his books or his works, and so how could I appreciate them? I had never heard of 'The Unexplored' before. You are right, and I had no business to be so angry. But how do you know that I am different now?"
"Oh, I know you are," said Maurice, confidently. "You have come to the club for one thing, you see; and you sang to the people and looked at them—well, as if you cared. And you have read 'The Unexplored' now?"
"Yes. I have," said Lesley, hesitatingly.
"And you like it?"