"Pshaw! I don't see anything heroic in going to a lecture you want to hear if a kind friend offers to take you. Let's talk of something else."
"I want to talk about you, Phil."
"Then you'll have to find somebody else to listen; I won't! I like to hear about interesting things. Now don't feel you must tell me I'm a fruitful topic!"
"I'm serious to-night. I haven't been happy lately. I've had a lot of responsibilities thrown on me—things I never knew about have been dumped down on me without any warning. I was tired to death to-night, and I can't tell you what a joy it's been to be with you. I wasn't listening to the lecture; it meant nothing to me. I was thinking of you, Phil."
Phil stopped short. The senior who had proposed to her had employed a similar prelude, and she had no intention of subjecting herself to a second attack.
"You may think of me all you like; but don't tell me; just let me guess. It isn't any fun if you know people think of you. We expect our friends to think of us. That's what we have them for."
She started off more briskly, but he refused to accommodate himself to her pace. The undercurrent of resentment in his soul gathered force. He must justify his boast to his brother, for one thing; and for another, his face smarted from her mother's light, ironic whip.
"Phil!" he began endearingly.
"Oh, come on! We can't stand in the street all night discussing the philosophy of life."
"Since that afternoon at the Run," he continued, as they started forward again, "everything has been different with me, Phil. I never felt until lately that I really wanted to follow my good inclinations: I've done a lot of things I'm sorry for, but that's all over. I felt that day, as we stood together at the top of the bluff, that a new spirit had come into my life. You know I'm a good deal older than you, Phil—just about ten years' difference; but you seem immensely older and wiser. I never knew a woman who knew as much."