"Yes, that's the demoralizing thing. It draws a gang of conscienceless attorneys here, and it draws us who belong here off into dirty work, and it brings us into contact with men and women—I'm sick of the whole business."
She had hardly followed him in his generalizations. She brought him back to the personal.
"You're sick of me, I know you are!" She leaned her head on the window-pane. Her eyes closed. "Oh, I wish my heart would stop beating!" she said, in a tense, profoundly significant tone.
Allen, sitting so close behind them, was forced to overhear, so piercingly sweet was her voice. He trembled for fear some one else might hear her. It seemed like profanation that any one but God should listen to this outcry of a quivering, writhing soul.
She faced her companion again. "You're the only man I know, now, that I respect, and you despise me."
"No, I don't; I pity you."
"That's worse. I want you to help me. Oh, if you could go with me, or if I could be with you!" Her gloved hands strained together in the agony of her desire.
His calm lips did not waver. He did not smile, even about the eyes. He knew her cry sprang from her need of a brother, not from the passion of a woman.
"Our home is yours just as long as you can bear the monotony of our simple lives," he said, in his quiet way, but it was deep-throated and unmistakable in its sincerity.
She laid her hand on his arm and clasped it hard, then turned away her head, and they rode in silence.