"Ah, don't say that, Mr. V.V.--don't look that way. It hurts me, in my heart.... Can't I make you believe that you've accomplished more than anybody else in the world?..."
He did not move at the shock of her touch, at the sound of his little name upon these unaccustomed lips. She was aware only of a subtle contraction, a sort of tightening going on somewhere within him. So Cally finished her small speech with her hand over his. But at just that point, a stir seemed to shake through the man; he was seen to be turning his head; and in the same breath, her moment of high strength broke abruptly. The veins fluttered queerly in the forward hand; she felt a quick flush rising somewhere within, spreading and tingling upward into her face. So Cally rose hurriedly, her hand withdrawn, and moved away. But she did her best, for her pride's sake, to envelop her movement with a matter-of-fact air; and when she had got about four steps away from him, she remarked, quite distinctly:
"Don't get up.... I ... want to get something."
And she did, in fact, go on to mamma's desk and attentively select three more sheets of note-paper, which would no doubt come in handy for something or other some day.
And out of the stillness behind her came Mr. V.V.'s voice, just a little husky now:
"No one ever did anything so sweet to me before."
But that only made things worse, turning a white light, as it were, on thoughts she had had before now of the loneliness of his life. So she, finding herself not strong enough to be a comforter after all, said in a resolute kind of way:
"I never like to hear my friends depreciated. So please don't do it any more.... What was the name of that book about factories--the one you said that Mr. Pond had?"
Silence behind her, and then: "'The New Factory Idea,' by T.B. Halton."
She noted this information carefully on one of her sheets of paper, thus proving that she was right to go and get them, all the time.