He touched her shoulder—gently. "Don't—please!" he said quietly. "In all the years we've known each other, have you ever seen anything in me to make you feel—like—that?"
Her head drooped still lower, and her face became crimson.
"Adelaide, look at me!"
She lifted her eyes until they met his uncertainly.
He put out his hand. "We are friends, aren't we?"
She instantly laid her hand in his.
"Friends," he repeated. "Let us hold fast to that—and let the rest take care of itself."
"I'm ashamed of myself," said she. And in her swift revulsion of feeling there was again opportunity for him. But he was not in the mood to see it.
"You certainly ought to be," replied he, with his frank smile that was so full of the suggestions of health and sanity and good humor. "You'll never get a martyr's crown at my expense."
At New York he rearranged their steamer accommodations. It was no longer diffidence and misplaced consideration that moved him permanently to establish the most difficult of barriers between them; it was pride now, for in her first stormy, moments in the train he had seen farther into her thoughts than he dared let himself realize.