She peeped at him, her lips parted in a merry smile. Evidently she was in a flippant mood.
"It would be most unfair to him were I to establish a prejudice in your mind against him."
"Yet you have already disapproved of my friendship with him."
"I have, as I already have told you."
"Yet you have never told me the reason," she reminded him.
"I cannot."
He shook his head.
For he would not wound her feelings for the world; and still it pained him to be compelled to leave her in a state bordering on perplexity, not to say bewilderment, as a result of his strange silence. A delicate subject requires a deft hand, and he sensed only too keenly his impotency in this respect. He, therefore, thought it best to avoid as much as possible any attempts at explanation, at least for the present.
Furthermore, he was entirely ignorant of her opinion of Anderson. Of course, he would have given worlds to know this. But there seemed no reasonable hope that that craving would be satisfied. He was persuaded that the man had made a most favorable impression upon her, and if that were true, he knew that it were fruitless to continue further, for impressions once made are not easily obliterated. Poor girl! he thought. She had seen only his best side; just that amount of good in a bad man that makes him dangerous,—just that amount of interest which often makes the cleverest person of a dullard.
Hence she was still an enigma. As far as he was concerned, however, there had been little or no variation in his attachment to her. She was ever the same interesting, lovely, tender, noble being; complete in her own virtues, indispensable to his own happiness. Perhaps he had been mistaken in his analysis of her; but no,—very likely she did care for the other man, or at any rate was beginning to find herself in that unfortunate state—fortunate, indeed, for Anderson, but unfortunate for him.