"I wish I were your friend," he said humbly.
"Why so?"
"Because you would then tell me your trouble, and let me try to comfort you."
"I haven't any trouble worth naming. I've just been crying like a foolish child because I was out of sorts. There, don't look at me so with your great, kind eyes, or I shall cry again, and I am ashamed of myself now."
"Something is troubling you, Miss Marsden, and I shall be very unhappy if you send me away without letting me help you."
"You would think me a fool if I told you," she faltered.
"No one will ever charge you with being that."
She gave him another of her quick, strange looks, like the one she fixed upon him when he first moved her to tears by weaving about her the 'spell of truth.' It was a look akin to that of a child who learns by an intuitive glance whom it may trust. After a moment, she said: "If you were less kind, less simple and sincere, I would indeed send you away, and not very amiably either, I fear. And yet I should like a few crumbs of comfort. I scarcely understand myself. Monday and yesterday I was so strangely happy that I seemed to have entered on a new life, and to-day I am as wicked and miserable a little sinner as ever breathed. The idea of my being a Christian!—never was farther from it. I've had nothing but mean and hateful thoughts since I awoke."
"And is this not a 'trouble worth naming'? In my judgment it is a most serious one."
"Do you think so?" she said gratefully. "But then I'm provoked that I can be so changeable. Dan just said, 'I wish you could be the same two days together,' and so do I."