"But I question this! I deny that Susan feels for me more than—gratitude and affection."
"Gratitude is rare," said Miss Goucher enigmatically, her eyes fixed upon the fragments of Buddha littering my hearth. "True gratitude," she added, "is a strong emotion. When it passes between a man and a woman, it is like flame."
"Very interesting!" I snapped. "But hardly enough to have brought you here to me with this!"
"She feels that you need her," said Miss Goucher.
"I do," was my reply.
"Susan doesn't need you," said Miss Goucher. "I don't wish to be brutal; but she doesn't. In spite of this, she can easily stand alone."
"I see. And you think that would be best?"
"Naturally. Don't you?"
"I'm not so sure."
As I muttered this my eyes, too, fixed themselves on the fragments of Buddha. Would the woman never go! I hated her; it seemed to me now that I had always hated her. What was she after all but a superior kind of servant—presuming in this way! The irritation of these thoughts swung me suddenly round to wound her, if I might, with sarcasm, with implied contempt. But it is impossible to wound the air. With her customary economy of explanation Miss Goucher had, pitilessly, left me to myself.