"It would be no use for you to read: I couldn't understand—I couldn't attend to your voice and the book at the same time."
"We'd better wait, then," said Sophie, turning her clear, gray eyes upon him with an expression of demure satire. "By-and-by, perhaps, it won't have such a distracting effect upon you—when you come to know me better. If not, I must keep away altogether."
Bressant's forehead grew red with sudden temper. He felt reproved, but was not prepared to acknowledge that he had merited it.
"You're very generous of your voice!" exclaimed he, resentfully. "It's your fault, not mine, that it's agreeable. You're not so kind as your tone is."
"I don't mean to be unkind," said she, more gently, looking down. "You don't seem to see the difference between unkindness and—what I said."
"What is the difference?" demanded he, taking her up.
Sophie paused a few moments, compassionating this great, willful boy, and wondering what she could do for him. He had saved her father's life, thereby imperilling his own, and disabling himself, and she could not but admire and thank him for it. But his manner puzzled and annoyed her, and was an obstacle in the way of her would-be helpfulness.
"You wouldn't ask that question, I think, if you'd had sisters, or a mother," she said, at last. "I suppose you've lived only with men. But you must learn how to treat young women from your own sense of what is delicate and true."
Bressant stared and was silent: and Sophie herself was surprised at the authoritative tone she was assuming toward a bearded man whom she had never met before. But it was impossible to associate with Bressant without either yielding to him, or, at least, behaving differently from at other times, in one way or another. He was a magnet that drew from people things unsuspected by themselves.
The pause was finally broken by the young man's accepting the situation with a grace, and even docility, which was nearly too much for Sophie's gravity.