"No; only kind and a gentleman."
"But—please!" he protested.
"Oh, but I mean it, every word! Why shouldn't I? In a little while, ten minutes, half an hour, we shall have seen the last of each other. Why should I not tell you how I appreciate all that you have unselfishly done for me?"
"If you put it that way,—I'm sure I don't know; beyond that it embarrasses me horribly to have you overestimate me so. If any courage has been shown this night, it is yours ... But I'm forgetting again." He thought to divert her. "Where shall I tell the cabby to go this time, Miss Calendar?"
"Craven Street, please," said the girl, and added a house number. "I am to meet my father there, with this,"—indicating the gladstone bag.
Kirkwood thrust head and shoulders out the window and instructed the cabby accordingly; but his ruse had been ineffectual, as he found when he sat back again. Quite composedly the girl took up the thread of conversation where it had been broken off.
"It's rather hard to keep silence, when you've been so good. I don't want you to think me less generous than yourself, but, truly, I can tell you nothing." She sighed a trace resentfully; or so he thought. "There is little enough in this—this wretched affair, that I understand myself; and that little, I may not tell ... I want you to know that."
"I understand, Miss Calendar."
"There's one thing I may say, however. I have done nothing wrong to-night, I believe," she added quickly.
"I've never for an instant questioned that," he returned with a qualm of shame; for what he said was not true.