“No-o—but I ought to be. You've made me talk the most shocking rubbish.”
“There we disagree again, you know. Everything you've said's been perfect. What you're thinking of now is that I'm not an old enough friend to have been allowed to hear it. But if I'm not as old a friend as some, I wish I could make you feel that I'm as solid a friend as any—as solid and as staunch and as true. I wish I could hear you say you believed that.”
“But you talk of 'friends,'” she said, in a tone not at all responsive—“what is meant by 'friends'? We've chanced to meet twice—and once we barely exchanged civilities, and this time we've been hotel acquaintances—hardly more, is it?—and you and your young people have been very polite to me—and I in a silly moment have talked to you more about my affairs than I should—I suppose it was because you mentioned my father. But 'friends' is rather a big word for that, isn't it?”
Thorpe pouted for a dubious moment. “I can think of a bigger word still,” he said, daringly. “It's been on the tip of my tongue more than once.”
She quickened her pace. The air had grown perceptibly colder. The distant mountains, visible ever and again through the bare branches, were of a dark and cheerless blue, and sharply defined against the sky. It was not yet the sunset hour, and there were no mists, but the light of day seemed to be going out of the heavens. He hurried on beside her in depressed silence.
Their companions were hidden from view in a convolution of the winding road, but they were so near that their voices could be heard as they talked. Frequently the sound of laughter came backward from them.
“They're jolly enough down there,” he commented at last, moodily.
“That's a good reason for our joining them, isn't it?” Her tone was at once casual and pointed.
“But I don't want to join them!” he protested. “Why don't you stay with me—and talk?” “But you bully me so,” she offered in explanation.
The phrase caught his attention. Could it be that it expressed her real feeling? She had said, he recalled, that he had made her talk. Her complaint was like an admission that he could overpower her will. If that were true—then he had resources of masterfulness still in reserve sufficient to win any victory.