“Go ahead and say the rest,” he ordered, after a short pause. “You've said so much that you had better finish it, seems to me. I'm lazy, you think. What else am I?”
“You're brave, awfully brave, and you are so strong and quick—yes, and—and—masterful; I think that is the right word. You ordered me about as if I were a little girl. I didn't want to keep still, as you told me to; I wanted to scream. And I wanted to faint, too, but you wouldn't let me. I had never seen you that way before. I didn't know you could be like that. That is what surprises me so. That is why I said you were so different.”
Here was balm for wounded pride. Albert's chin lifted. “Oh, that was nothing,” he said. “Whatever had to be done must be done right off, I could see that. You couldn't hang on where you were very long.”
She shuddered. “No,” she replied, “I could not. But I couldn't think WHAT to do, and you could. Yes, and did it, and made me do it.”
The chin lifted still more and the Speranza chest began to expand. Helen's next remark was in the natures of a reducer for the said expansion.
“If you could be so prompt and strong and—and energetic then,” she said, “I can't help wondering why you aren't like that all the time. I had begun to think you were just—just—”
“Lazy, eh?” he suggested.
“Why—why, no-o, but careless and indifferent and with not much ambition, certainly. You had talked so much about writing and yet you never tried to write anything, that—that—”
“That you thought I was all bluff. Thanks! Any more compliments?”
She turned on him impulsively. “Oh, don't!” she exclaimed. “Please don't! I know what I am saying sounds perfectly horrid, and especially now when you have just saved me from being badly hurt, if not killed. But don't you see that—that I am saying it because I am interested in you and sure you COULD do so much if you only would? If you would only try.”