"I mean what I told you some time ago—that there can be no friendship between a big man and a little woman."
"Oh, I had forgotten that."
"No, you hadn't; you thought of it just then as you spoke."
"Why, Mr. Taylor, how can you say that?"
"I can say it because it is true. No, there can be no friendship between us."
"You surely don't mean that there can be anything else." She had drawn back from him and was stiffly erect with her arms folded, her head high; and so narrow was the hard look she gave him that her eyes appeared smaller. Her lips were so tightly compressed that dimples showed in her cheeks; and thus with nature's soft relics of babyhood, she denied her own resentment.
"On your part I don't presume that there can be anything else," he answered, speaking the words slowly, as if he would weigh them one at a time on the tip of his tongue. "You may think of me as you please, as circumstances now compel you to think, and I will think of you not as I please, but as I must."
"Please don't talk that way. Don't reproach me when I am in such need of—of friendship. One of these days you may know me better, but now you can regard me only as a freak. Yes, I am a freak."
"You are an angel."
"Mr. Taylor!" Again her head was high, and in her eyes was the same suggestion of a sharp squint.