Nancy looked up into his dark face.
“No; and, in the same way, I’ve not fought a battle in your behalf since we met.”
“No?”
“At least—” she added hurriedly, as she recalled stray sentences of her talk with Barth, that morning. “But in a way you have told the truth. I have fought Mr. Barth’s battles with you all, until I sometimes feel as if I were wholly responsible for the man.”
“Then why not let him fight his own battles?”
A torn red leaf fluttered from Nancy’s fingers.
“Because he won’t. It’s not that he is a coward; it’s not that he is conceited or too sure of himself. It is only that he is like a great, overgrown child who never stops to think of the impression he is making. Sometimes it is refreshing; sometimes it makes one long to box him up and send him back to be tethered out on a chain attached to Westminster Abbey. Even that wouldn’t do, though, for the Poets’ Corner has made room for an American or two. Mr. Barth is queer and innocent and, just now and then, superlatively stupid. And yet, M. St. Jacques, I don’t believe he ever had an ignoble idea from the day of his birth up to to-day. He is absolutely generous and high-minded, and one can forgive a good deal for the sake of that.”
Flushed with her eager championship, she paused and smiled up into her companion’s eves. His answering smile drove the gravity from his face.
“Yes,” he assented; “and, from your very persistence, you imply that there is a good deal to forgive.”
“Something, perhaps,” she assented in her turn; “but it is largely negative. Meanwhile, he isn’t fair game for you and Mr. Brock.”