“Now? Why now?”
“Because I’m boring you to madness, little by little, and I’m awfully sorry too, for I want you to like me—though you say you never will—and of course you can’t like a bore, can you? I say, Miss Bowring, don’t you think we could strike some sort of friendly agreement—to be friends without ‘liking,’ somehow? I’m beginning to hate the word. I believe it’s the colour of my hair or my coat—or something—that you dislike so. I wish you’d tell me. It would be much kinder. I’d go to work and change it—”
“Dye your hair?” Clare laughed, glad that the ice was broken again.
“Oh yes—if you like,” he answered, laughing too. “Anything to please you.”
“Anything ‘in reason’—as you proposed yesterday.”
“No—anything in reason or out of it. I’m getting desperate!” He laughed again, but in his laughter there was a little note of something new to the young girl, a sort of understreak of earnestness.
“It isn’t anything you can change,” said Clare, after a moment’s hesitation. “And it certainly has nothing to do with your appearance, or your manners, or your tailor,” she added.
“Oh well, then, it’s evidently something I’ve done, or said,” Brook murmured, looking at her.
But she did not return his glance, as they walked side by side; indeed, she turned her face from him a little, and she said nothing, for she was far too truthful to deny his assertion.
“Then I’m right,” he said, with an interrogation, after a long pause.