He paused with a sense of approaching peril. “A long time—yes.”
“She told me you were friends—great friends”
“Yes,” he admitted, “we’re great friends.”
“Then you might naturally feel yourself justified in telling her that you don’t think I’m the right person for Effie.” He uttered a sound of protest, but she disregarded it. “I don’t say you’d like to do it. You wouldn’t: you’d hate it. And the natural alternative would be to try to persuade me that I’d be better off somewhere else than here. But supposing that failed, and you saw I was determined to stay? then you might think it your duty to tell Mrs. Leath.”
She laid the case before him with a cold lucidity. “I should, in your place, I believe,” she ended with a little laugh.
“I shouldn’t feel justified in telling her, behind your back, if I thought you unsuited for the place; but I should certainly feel justified,” he rejoined after a pause, “in telling you if I thought the place unsuited to you.”
“And that’s what you’re trying to tell me now?”
“Yes; but not for the reasons you imagine.”
“What, then, are your reasons, if you please?”
“I’ve already implied them in advising you not to give up all idea of the theatre. You’re too various, too gifted, too personal, to tie yourself down, at your age, to the dismal drudgery of teaching.”