He was staring straight ahead, and this time it was she who looked at a profile; stern and hard she thought it for a minute. Then the set lips relaxed, and a deep breath came through them. “I seem to care too much what you think,” he acknowledged. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose, what you do think. Never mind.”
“But I’ve apologized.”
“You haven’t changed your feeling about it. I’m not looking for a personal apology. It’s all right. Tell me—when do you think you can get off?”
Jane stopped short. The pair were in a side street, and there were no pedestrians upon it within a considerable distance. “Mr. Robert Black,” she said, “I’ll not go another foot with you till you are friends with me again.”
“Friends with you?” He seemed to consider the question. “Having once been your friend—how can I ever be anything else—unless you tell me I can’t be? But even friends can—fail to see.”
“I don’t fail to see. I see very clearly—quite suddenly. And—if we are both going over, in the same cause, we must keep on being friends. I think—” Jane’s voice held a peculiar vibration—“I think, before I am through with it, I may be very glad to have—a chaplain—for a friend!”
Robert Black looked at her steadily for a moment. His lips broke into a smile; she could see his splendid white teeth between the pleasant lines. “Ah, you do make full amends!” he admitted. “I—shall we——” Then he glanced up and down the street. He began to laugh. “Where is that hotel?” he queried.
Jane’s eyes scanned the street corners ahead and behind them. “I think we’ve gone by it,” she said, with mirth.
“Then—let’s go a little farther by. Do you mind? Mayn’t we go to that big building down there, before we turn around? It’s not raining so very hard now. I hate to take leave of you—just yet. It seems a poor place to stop—when we’ve just got back to—the place we started at.”
“And what was the place we started at?” She let him take her forward again. He was walking more and more slowly. It looked as if a good deal of time might possibly be consumed before they should reach the designated building and then retrace their steps to the patiently waiting hotel.