"We could talk of that," he smiled, trying to be reassuring, "after more important things had been settled."
"There wouldn't be anything more important—for me."
"Oh, you wouldn't find me an importunate creditor."
"That wouldn't help matters—so long as I owed the debt. After all, we belong to that old-fashioned, rather narrow-minded class of New England people to whom debt of any kind is the source of something like anguish. At least," she corrected herself, "I belong to that class."
It was on his lips to remind her that in her case there could be no present release from indebtedness, there could only be a change of creditors; but he decided to express himself more gracefully.
"Wouldn't it be possible," he asked, "to put the boot on the other foot, and to consider me as the person to whom the favor is shown in being allowed to do something useful?"
She lifted her chin scornfully. "That would be childish. It would be a mere quibbling with words."
"But it would be true. It's the way I should take it."
She confronted him with one of her imperious looks. "Why?"
In the monosyllable there was a demand for complete explanation, but he met it with one of his frank smiles.