"Crime, so-called, is like everything else in this world; a thing to be defined strictly by the motive and the point of view," said Griswold, mounting his hobby with joyous alacrity.
"I know; that is what you say"—this with an adorable uptilt of the pretty chin and a flash of the dark eyes which an instant before had been slumbrous wells of studious abstraction. "But your Fleming is going to prove the contrary; it may not be what you want him to do, but it will be what he will insist upon doing before you get through with him. You have already indicated it in the story, unconsciously, perhaps. When Fidelia surprises him, Fleming is almost ready to kill her; not in defense of the principle he has set up, but to save his own miserable life."
"That is a part of his humanity," insisted the craftsman stubbornly. "You don't know Fleming yet. Have you ever met Fidelia?"
"Not as you have drawn her—no. She is too unutterably fine. If she had a single shred of humanity about her, I should suspect you of meaning to fall in love with her, farther along—to the humiliation and despair of poor Joan, who, as you say, is a mere daughter of men."
"But how about Joan?" he fretted. "Is she out of drawing, too?"
"Yes; you are distorting her the other way—making her too inhumanly worldly and insincere." Then, with an abruptness that was like a slap in the face: "If you didn't spend so many evenings at Doctor Bertie's, you would get both Fidelia and Joan in better drawing."
He flushed and drew himself up, with the stabbed amour propre prompting him to make some stinging retort contrasting the wells of truth with the brackish waters of sheer worldliness. Then he saw how inadequate it would be; how utterly impossible it was to meet this charmingly vindictive young person upon any grounds save those of her own choosing.
"That is the first really unkind thing I have ever heard you say," was the mild reproach which was all that the reactionary second thought would sanction.
"Unkind to whom?—to you, or to Miss Farnham?"
"Ask yourself," he countered weakly; and she laughed at him.