"But you are! You are!"
"I'm not."
"Maurice, I'm awfully fond of Eleanor; you won't think I'm finding fault, or anything? But sometimes, when she doesn't feel very well, she—you—I mean, you really are a lamb, Maurice!"
Edith was twenty that summer—a strong, gay creature; but her old, ridiculous, incorrigible candor (and that honest kiss in the darkness!) made her still a child to Maurice.... Yet Johnny Bennett was going to marry her!... Maurice rested his chin on his left fist, and batted the fern; then he said:
"I've been infernally mean to Eleanor. It's little enough to be 'nice,' as you call it, now."
She flew to his defense. "Talk sense! You never did a mean thing in your life."
His shrug fired her into a frankness which she regretted the next minute. "Maurice, you are too good for Eleanor—or anybody," she ended, hastily.
He gave her a look of entreaty for understanding—though he knew, he thought, that in her ignorance of life she couldn't understand even if she had been told! Yet for the mere relief of speaking, he skirted the ugly truth:
"I can't be too patient with her when she's forlorn, because I—I haven't played the game with her."
"It's up to her to forgive that!"