“What a nice, red coal!” smiled Helen. “The top of my head feels quite warm. Dear me! Isn’t there a spot burned bald?”
She felt anxiously of her pretty hair.
“Come over and see my work,” said Bayard, “and you’ll never ask me again why I didn’t do anything I—would so much rather do.”
“I never asked you before!” flashed Helen.
“You did me an honor that I shall remember,” said Bayard gravely.
“Oh, please don’t! Pray forget it as soon as you can,” cried Helen, with red cheeks.
“You can’t know, you see you can’t know, how a man situated as I am prizes the signs of the simplest human friendship that is sincere and womanly.”
So said Bayard quietly. Helen drew a little quick breath. She seemed reconciled now, to herself, and to him. They began to talk at once, quite fast and freely. Afterwards he tried to remember what it had all been about, but he found it not easy; the evening passed on wings; he felt the atmosphere of this little pleasure with a delight impossible to be understood by a man who had not known and graced society and left it. Now and then he spoke of his work, but Helen did not exhibit a marked interest in the subject.
Bayard drew the modest inference that he had obtruded his own affairs with the obtuseness common to missionaries and other zealots; he roused himself to disused conversation, and to the forgotten topics of the world. It did not occur to him that this was precisely what she intended. The young lady drew him out, and drew him on. They chatted about Cesarea and Beacon Street, about Art, Clubs, Magazine literature, and the Symphony Concerts, like the ordinary social human being.
“You see I have been out of it so long!” pleaded Bayard.