"Why can't you?" says Dysart, in his downright way. "It means only a strong effort after all. If you feel honestly," with an earnest glance at her, "like that toward him, you must be mad to give him even a corner in your heart."
"That is it," says she, "there the puzzle begins. I don't know if he ever has a corner in my heart. He attracts me, but attraction is not affection, and the heart holds only love and hatred. Indifference is nothing."
"You can get rid of him finally," says Dysart, boldly, "by giving yourself to me. That will kill all——"
All he may be going to say is killed on his lips at this moment by two little wild shrieks of joy that sound right behind his head. Both he and Joyce turn abruptly in its direction—he with a sense of angry astonishment, she with a fell knowledge of its meaning. It is, indeed, no surprise to her when Tommy and Mabel appear suddenly from behind the rock just close to them, that hides the path in part, and precipitates themselves into her arms.
"We saw you, we saw you!" gasps Tommy, breathless from his run up the hill: "we saw you far away down there on the road, and we told Bridgie" (the maid) "that we'd run up, and she said 'cut along,' so here we are."
"You are, indeed," says Dysart, with feeling.
"We knew you'd be glad to see us," goes on Tommy to Joyce in the beautiful roar he always adopts when excited; "you haven't been home for years, and Bridgie says that's because you are going to be married to——"
"Get up, Tommy, you are too heavy, and, besides, I want to kiss Mabel," says Tommy's aunt with prodigious haste and a hot cheek.
"But mammy says you're a silly Billy," says Mabel in her shrill treble, "an' that——"
"Mammy is a shockingly rude person," says Mr. Dysart, hurrying to break into the dangerous confidence, no matter at what cost, even at the expense of the adored mammy. His remark is taken very badly.