"Then you won't do him a good turn?"
Ruth's fine eyes flashed and danced, irony, laughter, scorn, all crossing swords in their brown deeps. There were aspects of Alf that genuinely amused her.
"Would you like to talk it over with him?" she asked.
"And supposing I have?"
"He'll be back in a moment," she said, sweet and bright. "I'll ask him."
Alf was silent, fumbling with his watch-chain. Then he began again in the same hushed voice, and with the same averted face.
"And there's another thing between us." His eyes were shut, and he was weaving to and fro like a snake in the love-dance. "Sorry you're trying to make bad blood between me and my old dad," he said. "Very sorry, Ruth."
"I aren't," Ruth answered swiftly. "You was always un-friends from the cradle, you and dad. See he don't think you're right." She added a little stab of her own—"No one does. That's why they keep you on as sidesman, Mr. Chislehurst says. Charity-like. They're sorry for you. So'm I."
The words touched Alf's vital spot—the conceit that was the most obvious symptom of his insanity. His face changed, but his voice remained as before, stealthy and insinuating. He came a little closer, and his eyes caressed her figure covetously.
"You see I wouldn't annoy me, not too far, not if I was you, Ruth. You can go too far even with a saint upon the cross."