"I think I never saw any one so ingenious in pleas for the sharing system. Possibly, if you were the empty cloud you would feel differently."
"I hope not. I think it takes a larger nature to receive nobly than to give nobly."
"So do I. It takes a nature so great few men have attained to it," he said quickly. "I acknowledge that I have not."
"'A fault confessed is half redressed'," murmured Joyce.
"Is pride a fault?" he asked quickly.
"Isn't it? According to the Bible it's a large one, almost a crime." Her laughing eyes sought his, and she continued, "Now, I haven't a particle of pride. I've eaten one peach and I want another. Moreover, I want it pared and quartered."
They were almost as isolated in their little corner as if in a nook of the woods. The crowds surged to and fro, and its units were "but as trees walking" to their oblivious eyes. Joyce was discovering new depths in George Dalton's nature. He was a thinker, and as his thinking had grown out of contact with men, rather than from grubbing in books, it was often of a unique and picturesque kind.
He saw the ludicrous in everything, and, with all his practicality, there was a strain of romance so fresh and young mingled with it, that it made a boy of him whenever he was dominated by it. He was the boy to-night, and as he leaned towards Joyce, talking in an undertone, his eye bright, his laughter frequent, his manner full of respectful friendliness, she forgot that he had ever seemed hard, cold, and given over to business alone.
At length the call of a train at some distant doorway startled Joyce, and she glanced around.
"Isn't that our train he's calling? It can't be! But I'm afraid it is."