Belle felt what was coming. She saw it in his eye, she heard it in his voice. Desperately she resolved to meet it half-way.
“I have been finding that out this evening. Since I have come here I have understood for the first time what you are and what I am. Mr. Hammond, after this evening we must not meet again.”
“Belle! Why do you say that?”
There was a note of anguish in his voice. He had been fighting a battle with himself all this time. It had never occurred to him that there might be another to overcome besides.
She looked him steadily in the face.
“Why do you call me Belle?”
“I thought we were friends,” he said. But he blushed as he said it.
“What kind of friends? Would your friendship with Lady Victoria allow you to call her by her Christian name? Don’t you see that the difference between her and me makes our friendship impossible?”
“Don’t you trust me, then?” asked the man.
“You have no right to ask me for my trust. You and I belong to different worlds. Where there is no equality there can be no friendship. It would have been better if we had never met.”