"How imaginative you are! Don't you think all wrong-doers resent their punishment?"
"No, I do not. Many times in my life I have felt that I was not getting the full measure of my dues in that way. In fact, the hardest things in my experience have not come to me in the guise of reproof. I could not connect them with any of my ill doings. They just came out of a clear sky, as it were. Often, when I have been naughtiest, I have seemed to escape with less of pain and trouble than when I have been trying to be exceptionally good."
"Perhaps you were not logical enough to trace out cause and effect."
"Possibly not." She looked at him reflectively a moment. "I am very illogical, I fear. I once told myself that anything I might want to do to help Littleton would be over your dead body, almost. And, now, I never make a move without looking to you for the encouragement and support that make it perfectly satisfactory. I ought to have read you better from the first!"
Dalton rigidly suppressed the tremor of emotion that shook him from head to foot, and after an instant's pause answered in a cool tone,
"A man generally makes his employer's interests his own, doesn't he?"
She laughed sweetly.
"Am I your employer? It seems funny, doesn't it? But you need not try to explain it all away through your loyalty to my interests. I won't believe that. You are just as much interested in these people as I am. You know every man, woman, and child by name and nature—now 'fess! Don't you?"
"I'd be a chump if I did not make that a part of my business, at least to some extent. Of course I know some better than others."
They fell into silence after that. George had no desire to talk. It was enough to sit close beside a presence which meant the personification of purity and sweetness to him. Silence is never intrusive, She can sit between lovers, even, and shed a benediction upon both. It is only nervousness and fear that will drive her away. Joyce spoke first, in a tone almost of relief,