She nodded.
"Poor devil!"
A thousand apprehensions fled—darkening—across her face. So pass a flight of starlings with a thousand whirring wings that sweep out light of the sun.
"You think I treated him badly?"
"No, I didn't say so."
"But you think it?" She begged eagerly, importunately.
"No, no, my dear child; no. What else could you do?"
"But you felt sorry for him?"
"Do you forbid it? I was putting myself in his shoes, feeling for the moment what he must have felt. Sift it down and you'll find at the bottom that I really said poor devil for myself." He laughed as he looked at her. "Well, now," he went on, "we're getting more than halfway through dinner and we haven't decided where we're going to yet. What's it to be?"
"Really, I don't mind a little bit."