Josephine shivered.
"Don't!" she implored. "You sound too much in earnest."
"I am in earnest about that man," he replied gravely. "I beg you, Lady Dredlinton, as I hope to call myself your friend, not to trust him, not to encourage him to visit you, to keep him always at arm's length."
"And I," she answered, holding out her hand, "as I hope and mean to be—as I am your friend—promise that I will have no more to do with him than the barest courtesy demands. To tell you the truth, your coming this afternoon was a little inopportune. If you had been a single minute later, I honestly believe that he would have said unforgivable things."
Wingate's eyes flashed.
"If I could have heard him!" he muttered.
"But, dear friend, you could have said nothing nor done anything," she reminded him soothingly. "Remember that although we are a little older friends than many people know of, we still have some distance to go in understanding."
"I want to be your friend, and I want to be your friend quickly," he said doggedly.
"No one in the world needs friends as I do," Josephine answered, "because
I do not think that any one is more lonely."
"You have changed," he told her, his eyes full of sympathy.