"Tell me, at least," he said, "how the poor young idiot offended you."
"Offended me! Scarcely that."
"You are not a woman" he said, "to interfere in anything without a cause."
"I am a woman of whim," she said. "You have told me so many times."
"You are a very wonderful woman," he said softly, "and you know very well that your will is quite sufficient for me. Yet you are also a generous woman. I have many a time had to stand godfather to your literary foundlings. You have never yet exercised the contrary privilege. I have done a mean thing and an ungenerous thing, and though I would do it again at your bidding, again and again, I should like an excuse—if there is any excuse."
"I am so sorry," she said. "There will be no excuse for you. I, too, have been mean and ungenerous—but I should be the same again. I took some interest in that young man, and I offered him my help. He coolly declined it—talked of succeeding by his own exertions. So priggish, you know, and I felt bound to let him see that the path to literary fame was not altogether the pleasant highway he seemed to expect."
"That was all?"
"Everything."
"He wounded your vanity; you stoop to retaliate."
She beamed upon him.