"Do you know," she said, as she sat there watching him with his eyes covered by his hand—"do you know that once or twice when we have been together I have wished I was a man, that I could say some things to you that a woman or a girl—that is, most girls—can't say very well? One of the things is that I should be glad to hear of you getting out of this life here; there is something wrong about it to you—something that doesn't suit you; I don't know what it is, but I can see you are not the man you might be—and ought to be. I've thought of it often since I saw you last, and sometimes—yes—I've been sorry for my ugly manner toward you. White people, when they meet in these out-of-the-way places in the world, ought to be as so many brothers and sisters to each other; and there were times, often, when I might have helped you to feel at home among us—when I might have been more kind."
"More kind? Good God!" whispered the man.
"And I made up my mind," continued the girl courageously, "that if I ever saw you again, I was going to speak plainly to you about yourself and the dissatisfaction with yourself that you spoke of that day in the laurel thicket. I don't know what the cause of it is, and I don't want to, but if it is any wrong that you've done in—in the past, a bad way to atone is by burying oneself alive, along with all energy and ambition. Now, you may think me presuming to say these things to you like this; but I've been wishing somebody would say them to you, and there seems no one here to do it but me, and so—"
She stopped, not so much because she had finished as because she felt herself failing utterly in saying the things she had really intended to say. It all sounded very flat and commonplace in her own ears—not at all the words to carry any influence to anyone, and so she stopped helplessly and looked at him.
"I'm glad it is you that says them," he answered, still without looking at her, "because you've got the stuff in you for such a good, square friend to a man—the sort of woman a person could go to in trouble, even if they hadn't the passport of a saint to take with them; and I wish—I wish I could tell you to-night something of the things that you've started on. If I could—" he stopped a moment.
"I suppose any other girl—" she began in a deprecating tone; but he dropped his hand from his eyes and looked at her.
"You're not like other girls," he said with a great fondness in his eyes, "and that's just the reason I feel like telling you all. You're not like any girl I've ever known. I've often felt like speaking to you as if you were a boy—an almighty aggravatin' slip of a boy sometimes; and yet—"
He lay silent for a little while, so long that the girl wondered if he had forgotten what he was to try to tell her. The warmth after the rain had made them neglect the fire, and its blaze had dropped low and lower, until she was entirely in the shadow—only across the hearth and his form did the light fall.
"And yet," he continued, as if there had been no break in his speech, "there's been many a night I've dreamed of seeing you sit here by this fire-place just as I've seen you to-night; just as bright like and contented, as if all the roughness and poorness of it was nothing to you, or else a big joke for you to make fun of; and then—well, at such times you didn't seem like a boy, but—"
Again he stopped.