“She is seventeen—will be eighteen shortly. Biology calls that quite old enough.”
Blynn dropped his grasp. “She is only a child,” he repeated firmly.
“My mother was married and had children at seventeen,” Leopold considered for a moment. The agitation of his companion was hid by the darkness. “Child? Oh, no, my dear Allen—she is a full-grown woman—charged with womanhood. Well, she broke away tonight.... At first, I was angry—then I was glad. Her resistance is the measure of her constancy.... You don’t mind my talking out this way, old fellow.”
“No! no! Go on!”
But he did not go on. Leopold’s sensitiveness was slowly taking account of the long stride of the man by his side. As they passed a street-lamp he saw the white face staring ahead into the night, and caught the firm lips and the long, deep breathing.
“You are fond of her?” Leopold asked mildly.
No answer; but in that vibrating moment words were not essential.
Unconscious of direction, the two men had been marching on across the city-line, and were now pacing through a deeply wooded lane in Montgomery county.
“I always fancied it was a purely pedagogic interest,” Leopold remarked, as if to the trees lined thick along the road.
Again there was no answer.