“I would only believe that,” he replied quietly, “if you told me so yourself.”
She looked at him quickly, and then turned her face aside, unwilling that he should detect the shame in her eyes, and the gratitude that strove with other emotions at his unexpected answer. She knew so little of this man, who was but a chance acquaintance; and yet already he appeared inexplicably mixed up in her life, acquainted with all the most intimate details concerning her. It puzzled her why he should display this interest in her affairs. She felt that she ought to resent his unwarranted interference; and yet oddly she did not feel resentful. It was after all rather a relief to have some one with whom to discuss these matters, which were too private and difficult to speak of with other people. His knowledge of events seemed to constitute a reason, if not a right, for his discussion of them. But his intimacy with the Arnotts, and with Mrs Carruthers, inclined her to be somewhat on her guard with him.
“I don’t know why you should be less ready than others to believe the reports that are spread,” she remarked. “Your knowledge of me is so slight. We’ve met—three times, is it?”
“I am not judging from my knowledge of you, but from my knowledge of human nature,” he returned.
She laughed cynically.
“Has human nature revealed only its amiable qualities to you?” she asked.
“Oh! no. Not by any means. But humanity is not without a moral sense. The baseness which some natures reveal is a form of degeneracy,—a sign of mental abnormality. In the case of man or woman, deliberate viciousness denotes a kink somewhere.”
She pondered this.
“Yes,” she allowed; “you are probably right. But there are a good many people with kinks. I may have a kink myself... I believe I have.”
“Then straighten it out,” he advised.