"Mr. Lisle, you remember what you said to papa. That was absurd. Only for you I would not be sitting here now. No," raising her hand with a deprecatory gesture as she saw that he was about to speak, "if you had not come that time, I know in another moment I would have been dead."
"Was it so bad as all that? Well, but Miss Denis, that I should drag that fellow off was a matter of course—that's understood. Do you think any man would stand by and see that brute throttle a girl before his face? But that you should interfere in my behalf was quite a different affair—you know that. My life hung on a thread—I believe I was within ten seconds of eternity. If you had not made that dash when you did, I should have been a dead man. I owe my life to your courage."
"Courage! Oh, if you only knew how little I deserve the word! You would not believe what a miserable coward I am. I actually tremble in the dark; I dread to open a door—much less to look round a corner; in every shadow I seem to see Aboo's face. I never, never could have believed that in so short a time I should have sunk to such an abject condition."
"You will get over it all right. It is the reaction. You will soon forget it all," he answered reassuringly.
"I wish I could—all but your share in it. I shall never forget that!"
"Miss Denis," he answered gravely, "I am not good at making speeches, like—" he was going to add Quentin, but substituted—"other people; but whatever I say, I mean. I shall always remember that you stood by me at a great crisis, just as a man might have done. If you were a man, I would ask you to be my friend for life—and I am not a fellow of many friends—but as it is—" and he hesitated.
"But as it is," she was the only girl he had ever cared two straws about, and she was in love with James Quentin.
As it was, she repeated, surprised at this sudden pause, "I shall be very glad to be your friend all the same." Then, with a sudden pang of apprehension lest she had been over-bold, she blushed crimson, and came to a full stop.
"Agreed, Miss Denis. If you ever want a friend—I speak in the fullest sense of the word—remember our bargain, and that you have one in me."
The conversation had become so extremely personal that Helen was glad to change it rather abruptly by saying,—