"If I did not, I should not ask you, and I think I have a right to demand an answer."
"I can hardly answer you fairly. Is ice to blame for being ice and not sun? We cannot say. We only know that we are chilled. I always have the feeling that with those you consider your equals, you might be genial and responsive; but the joys and sorrows of the great world of uninteresting, commonplace people about you have no power to touch your sympathies. Of course, in a way, it is not your fault that you never noticed Tilly Marsden's manner—"
"I am not a cad who goes about investigating the sentiments of—of women like that. But you have your impressions of my character fully formed, and I shall not be guilty of the folly of trying to change them. To-morrow, I shall relieve Nepaug of my objectionable presence, and, I hope, you will cease to fear me as a disturbing element when I am far away at my office-desk."
"You are going back to New York?" echoed Winifred, uncertainly, realizing all of a sudden what it was that she was sending him away from, and to what she was consigning him.
"Yes, of course," Flint answered a little impatiently.
"I am sorry," the girl began lamely. It was just dawning upon her that it was not so easy to control the destinies of other people, as she had fancied.
"Oh, that is all right!" her companion responded more cheerfully; "New York in summer is not half so bad as you people who never stay there probably imagine."
"I don't know," said Winifred; "to me it seems dreadful to be shut up inside brick walls, or walking on hot paving-stones, when one might be sitting under green trees, or by rolling waves, breathing in the fresh country air. But I suppose I feel so because while I was growing up I never lived in a large city."
"Indeed! How was that? I should think your father's profession would have kept him in the city."