"This girl of White's—how old is she, Reynolds?" he presently inquired, in a tone so abrupt that his companion looked up as if startled. "She's scarcely a woman yet, is she?"
Reynolds did not answer promptly, but kept his eyes on Moreton's face while they walked two or three paces.
"Oh, the devil, what do I know or care about her?" he at length said. "You'd better go out and interview her. She seems to have tangled your fancy." The words look brutal, but his voice and manner were merely indifferent and light, with a touch of good-humored raillery.
"She does stay in my head somehow," Moreton frankly replied. "And I confess that it amazes me to know that you have never discovered what deuced physical perfection she has. You needn't try to make me believe in your obtuseness, however: I know you too well, don't you know."
Reynolds laughed, and laying his hand on Moreton's arm, said:
"You have happened to see her at some exceptional angle and with an artist's eye. Poor little thing, it is a small measure that fills her life. Hers is a hopeless lot. Let's choose a better subject. Now there's Miss Noble."
Moreton did not respond promptly, but looked rather searchingly at his friend. He almost resented the democratic freedom that linked so readily and intimately the names of Milly White and Cordelia Noble. Presently he said:
"Miss Noble is an exceptional American girl. She has all the naïveté and freshness of the country without any trace of its deuced vulgarity."
"Your long residence of two months in this great country fully equips you for criticism," replied Reynolds with mock gravity.
"I have lived a thousand years in America," was Moreton's response. "Every hour has been a decade. I never felt a genuine sentiment before I came here. You must pardon me if I arrogate to myself the right to speak patronizingly to one who has only been here thirty or thirty-five years."