“I hope she told you that I didn’t break it.”
“Yes; she told me that, too.”
“You are not saying it, but deep down in your heart you are telling yourself that I have got only what was coming to me. Isn’t that true?”
The answer came from lips that were paling a little. “Ask yourself.”
“It is true. And it is also true, perhaps, that I should have had this other whipping; the one I got yesterday afternoon when I was trying to meet Hartridge on his way back from the ‘Pocket.’”
She was still keeping her face averted.
“I can’t talk about that now, to any one—least of all, to you.”
He bent lower to make sure that the group at the other end of the room should not overhear.
“I want to meet the man. If I stay here on Mount Pisgah—if I don’t throw it all up and go home—I mean to do what I can to help. Once I shouldn’t have been big enough to say such a thing, Richardia; but—thank God—I’ve grown a little in the past few months. May I add that it is you who have shown me how to grow?”
She ignored the query and for the first time let him see her eyes: they were swimming, and there was a note in her voice that he had never heard before when she said: “You must not talk of giving up and going away; you are the one who can do the most to help when the time comes—if only——”