"I want you to be my friend—if you will. I repeat, you can trust me now."
Her eyes sparkled dangerously. "It's fortunate I understand men—and have a sense of humor."
"I know I deserve any punishment you choose to give," said he. "And I'll take it. Only—I want to stay on here—and to have your friendship."
She studied him critically. Her expression would have been trying enough in its penetrating judicial intelligence for the least self-conscious of men. It utterly disconcerted Basil, bred in the fashionable world's incessant consciousness of self. But in his desperation he withstood her look, returned it with eyes that were appealing yet not abject. It pleased her that he was not abject. "After all, you went on my advice, didn't you?" said she in a friendlier tone. "And you've been most manlike—have shown yourself to be just what I thought you. So I'm really unreasonable." She gave him her hand. "Yes, let us be friends."
"And you forgive me?"
She smiled queerly. "That's asking too much. I may—in time. Just at present—you've made me feel horribly cheap and—common."
He hung his head. "If you knew how I've suffered for it," he said. "I was afraid you'd send me away—would never see me again."
"Let's not talk about it," cried she, angry at her own weakness in not meting out to him what he apparently expected and certainly deserved. But she was not so angry that she held to her purpose of going upstairs. Instead, she sat at the piano and began to dash off the noisiest pieces she knew.
IX
The friendship now throve like Courtney's best-placed flower bed. She had always been healthy; so she had not a touch of "temperament"—which is the misleading romantic name for internal physical conditions anything but romantic. Most of those who have mentality have also imperfect health through neglect of physical needs; and the somberer shades, the grays and blue blacks, made the more melancholy by imagination, usually canopy their lives. But with her it was not so. Always healthy in body and in mind, she now irradiated perfume and color like the rose that is getting just the right sun and rain.