"I should have whatever you liked, including you."
"Which I don't like, and won't give," said Leah, indignantly. "In you I looked to find a friend, and I find nothing but ungoverned passion, that would drag the object of his adoration in the mud. Oh! oh!"--out came the inevitable handkerchief--"how I have been deceived!"
By this time, the brute, with a penitent tail between its legs, was beginning to believe itself entirely in the wrong. Lady Jim, seeing this, became more than ever a tender woman. "I forgive you," she declared, plaintively, from behind a handkerchief mopping dry eyes; "this scene will be as though it had never been."
"But my feelings," rebelled the cave-man, sulkily.
"Will always be those of sacred friendship for a much-tried woman."
"How can they be, when----?"
"When you have made such a fool of yourself? Ah, my poor Harry, forget your folly. Remember only that I forgive you."
"I don't exactly mean that," grumbled poor Harry, scenting sophistry, but unable to prevent the war being carried into his camp. "You--well----you see Oh, hang it, Leah, you know that I love you."
"Not with that true love which is at once tender and respectful."
These sentiments were really noble, but somehow the bewildered man was not in the mood for copy-book philosophy. "You offer me a stone and call it a beautiful loaf," said he, bitterly, and with heat.