She heard him through without comment other than a kindling of the brown eyes at the climaxes of daring; but at the end she gave him praise unstinted.
"You have played the man, David, as I knew you would if you could be once fully aroused. I've had faith in you from the very first."
"It has been more than faith, Portia," he asserted soberly. "You have taken me up and carried me when I could neither run nor walk. Do you suppose I am so besotted as not to realize that you have been the head, while I have been only the hand?"
"Nonsense!" she said lightly. "You are in the dumps of the reaction now. You mustn't say things that you will be sorry for, later on."
"I am going to say one thing, nevertheless; and will remain for you to make it a thing hard to be remembered, or the other kind. Will you take what there is of me and make what you can of it?"
She laughed in his face.
"No, my dear David; no, no, no." And after a little pause: "How deliciously transparent you are, to be sure!"
He would have been less than a man if his self-love had not been touched in its most sensitive part.
"I am glad if it amuses you," he frowned. "Only I meant it in all seriousness."
"No, you didn't; you only thought you did," she contradicted, and the brown eyes were still laughing at him. "Let me tell you what you did mean. You are pleased to think that I have helped you—that an obligation has been incurred; and you meant to pay your debt like a man and a gentleman in the only coin a woman is supposed to recognize."