She turned her face and looked towards him with gravely inquiring eyes.
“I’ve got to go away,” he jerked out after a pause. “I’ve got to get back. This is very pleasant, but... it has to come to an end.”
“Yes,” she agreed, and looked a little puzzled—“of course. We expected you would be leaving shortly. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want to go.” He was insistent on this point. “I regret going—immensely.” He paused, and added after a thoughtful moment: “For some reasons I regret that I ever came.”
“That is not very kind,” she said. “No,” he allowed; “it doesn’t sound kind. But... you know. You understand... I’ve been here too long.”
“I think,” she said, breaking the short embarrassed silence with a remark so apposite that he was considerably taken aback, “that Herman Nel’s company has affected you. I did not wish to leave you with him.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“He is a man who holds mistaken ideas,” she replied. “In my opinion he is a very fine man,” he returned, a note of quiet admiration in his voice. “But I don’t see what grounds you have for assuming my mind to be so responsive to tutelage. I am not more readily impressed than most people.”
She laughed in some amusement, but made no comment on his speech. It flashed into her mind to wonder whether he was so fixed in his opinions that she would fail to sway him if she essayed the task? And thinking so, and looking up with the laugh still in her eyes, she surprised so warm an expression of admiration in his glance that her cheeks burned under his look. She turned her face away. It seemed to her that in his eyes she had read an answer to her thought.
“You do not go to-day?” she asked presently.