"Well," said Barbara, who met his gaze with quiet composure, "I might have been less so had I not expected quite so much from you. After all, it does not greatly matter—and here is the tea."
"I think it matters a good deal, but perhaps we needn't go into that," said Brooke, who took the cup she handed him. "You have poured out tea for me on several occasions now, but still, each one recalls the first time you did it at the Quatomac ranch."
The same thing had happened to Barbara, but she laughed. "It, presumably, made no difference to the tea, and yours runs some risk of getting cold."
Brooke appeared to be holding his cup with quite unnecessary firmness, and she fancied his color was a trifle paler than it had been, but he smiled.
"I really do not remember that it tasted any the worse," he said. "Perhaps you can remember how the sound of the river came in through the open door that night, and the light flickered in the draughts. It showed up your face in profile, and I can still picture Jimmy sitting by the stove, with his mouth wide open, watching you. He had evidently never seen anything of the kind before."
Barbara noticed the manner in which he pulled himself up, and realized that the sentence had deviated from its natural conclusion. It was, though he had certainly been guilty of obtaining what she was pleased to consider her esteem by a course of disgraceful imposition, gratifying that he should be able to recall that evening. That, however, was not to be admitted.
"I remember that the two candles were stuck in whisky bottles," she said. "You removed them somewhat suddenly when you came in."
Brooke smiled, but his face was a trifle grey in patches now, and the cup was shaking visibly. "I really shouldn't have done," he said. "Still, you see, I was a trifle flurried that night, and like Jimmy in one respect, in that I had never——"
"You, at least, had been handed tea by a lady before," said Barbara, severely.
"I had, but the incomplete explanation still holds good. Well, it was, no doubt, unwise of me to take those candlesticks away, since to disguise one's habits for a stranger's benefit naturally implies a deficiency of becoming pride, and it could, in any case, only have made the thing more palpable to you."