"Why—no." The pre-occupied note was uppermost in his answer. "I'd not mind at all."
But he offered no more than that.
"Nor the reason why you've been so insistent that I stay on up here?"
"Why not? I've not forgotten my manners, even though I've lived some months in the back-brush!"
No attempt at levity, however, could parry the other's deliberate insolence. Garry worked nearer to what had lain all day behind his bad silence.
"A man is wasting his time trying to reform another man," he vouchsafed, "if that other man has no desire for reformation."
"That is very, very true," Steve agreed with even gravity.
"Unless that man has the desire within himself, he need never waste his time even hoping to come back!"
"I'm forced to admit that there is no room for argument in that, either," said Steve. "Only it has to be more than a desire. It must have become determination."
He hesitated, and the whimsical note crept in and dulled the threatened edge of hardness in his voice.