That seemed to break the ice, and because he appeared to feel no embarrassment, she found that hers had quite left her. Before she realised it, the morning was well advanced, and when she left him it was with a curious feeling that they had known each other for years and years ... very well.
And that was only the beginning of the very odd, but very real, friendship which sprang up between them. It would have surprised—perhaps shocked—her friends to know how much time she spent with him; but it would have shocked them still more to know the topics of the conversations between them. She herself was amazed every time she left him; not at the range and depth of his interests and his knowledge—but at her own. He seemed to evoke ideas and words that she had never dreamed were there. It struck her as little short of sorcery.
But the situation was not wholly pleasant. There were little rifts to mar the lute. The first came after several weeks. It was Roger who introduced it.
"Say, Judith," he said suddenly, one night at dinner, "Good's going to be up and around pretty soon. You can't keep him cooped up there forever, you know. When are you going to have him down to meals?"
He voiced a question which had been occurring with troublesome frequency in her own mind. She was silent for a moment, as she struggled with a decision she could no longer evade. It was a curious predicament in which events had placed her—not easy to understand readily. It was indisputable that Good was ignorant of either the theory or practice of those conventions of the table upon which, against her will, she set much store. It was equally certain that he was quite conscious of his deficiencies in that respect. Were she in his place, she told herself, she would prefer not to suffer the embarrassments which the contrasts between themselves and him must entail. But on the other hand, did she not perhaps over-emphasise his sensitiveness, and was it not more than probable that to his sense of proportion her conception of the manner of human intercourse was absurd, if not pitiful? She found herself in a situation where, in an effort to be kind, she might be cruel. And what was to her merely tact, might be to him pure snobbishness. That settled the problem. She could not risk even the appearance of pettiness. The decision made her realise, as nothing else had, how much his judgments had come to mean to her.
"You're right, Roger," she said finally; "we'll have him down to-morrow."
Roger looked at her quizzically.
"Where?" he asked.
"Where?" She affected bewilderment.
"Yes. Here ... or alone ... or...?"