She disarmed the words of her flippancy by the look with which she lifted her dark-lashed eyes to him, and Christopher’s last shred of common sense sank in their tender depths and was lost there.
“Is that true?” he said, without taking his eyes from her face. “Do you really trust me? would you promise always to trust me?”
“Yes, I’m sure I’d always trust you,” answered Francie, beginning in some inexplicable way to feel frightened; “I think you’re awfully kind.”
“No, I am not kind,” he said, turning suddenly very white, and feeling his blood beating down to his finger-tips; “you must not say that when you know it’s—” Something seemed to catch in his throat and take his voice away. “It gives me the greatest pleasure to do anything for you,” he ended lamely.
The clear crimson deepened in Francie’s cheeks. She knew in one startling instant what Christopher meant, and her fingers twined and untwined themselves in the crochet sofa-cover as she sat, not daring to look at him, and not knowing in the least what to say.
“How can I be kind to you?” went on Christopher, his vacillation swept away by the look in her downcast face that told him she understood him; “it’s just the other way, it’s you who are kind to me. If you only knew what happiness it is to me—to—to be with you—to do anything on earth for you—you know what I mean—I see you know what I mean.”
A vision rose up before Francie of her past self, loitering about the Dublin streets, and another of an incredible and yet possible future self, dwelling at Bruff in purple and fine linen, and then she looked up and met Christopher’s eyes. She saw the look of tortured uncertainty and avowed purpose that there was no mistaking; Bruff and its glories melted away before it, and in their stead came Hawkins’ laughing face, his voice, his touch, his kiss, in overpowering contrast to the face opposite to her, with its uncomprehended intellect and refinement, and its pale anxiety.
“Don’t say things like that to me, Mr. Dysart,” she said tremulously; “I know how good you are to me, twice, twice too good, and if I was in trouble, you’d be the first I’d come to. But I’m all right,” with an attempted gaiety and unconcern that went near bringing the tears to her eye; “I can paddle my own canoe for a while yet!”
Her instinct told her that Christopher would be quicker than most men to understand that she was putting up a line of defence, and to respect it; and with the unfailing recoil of her mind upon Hawkins, she thought how little such a method would have prevailed with him.
“Then you don’t want me?” said Christopher, almost in a whisper.