"Can I not help you?" said I, thinking that there had at last arisen an occasion of capturing that confidence which for weeks I had been striving to win.
He remained silent. I have told you already that I had little experience of women. But I must confess that at this moment I noticed that I had still less experience of men. I felt sure that, if I had been with a nice girl—I wish he had been a nice girl instead of a morose, old man—I should have known what to say. Indeed, there are not many words necessary. But I could not profit by the moon, nor by that mild night of May, I could not possibly put my arm around his waist and press him to my manly breast....
After a long while I said at last:
"Can you not trust me, Mr. Doblana?"
"Trust you? Trust you?" he replied. "I cannot even trust my own daughter, who works with that gang against me! And I should trust you, a stranger? No, no, Mr. Cooper."
And laughing bitterly he suggested:
"Come, let us go home."
We got up and went. I had learned nothing. I was as ignorant as before. But....
You will see in the course of this story that you never can confide in females. And a bench is a female in German. This one was as treacherous as all of them. It had made me catch a cold. Or rather ... the cold had caught me.