“If you want me to believe that, you will beg my uncle's pardon.”
“I can't do that. He is my enemy and I shall hate him forever; I shall fight him and his way of doing business until he reforms or I am exhausted.”
She looked up at him, showing a face in which resentment, outrage, and wistfulness were mirrored.
“You realize, of course, what your insistence on that plan means, Mr. Cardigan?”
“Call me Bryce,” he pleaded. “You're going to call me that some day anyhow, so why not start now?”
“You are altogether insufferable, sir. Please go away and never presume to address me again. You are quite impossible.”
He shook his head. “I do not give up that readily, Shirley. I didn't know how dear—what your friendship meant to me, until you sent me away; I didn't think there was any hope until you warned me those dogs were hunting me—and called me Bryce.” He held out his hand. “'God gave us our relations,'” he quoted, “'but thank God, we can choose our friends.' And I'll be a good friend to you, Shirley Sumner, until I have earned the right to be something more. Won't you shake hands with me? Remember, this fight to-day is only the first skirmish in a war to the finish—and I am leading a forlorn hope. If I lose—well, this will be good-bye.”
“I hate you,” she answered drearily. “All our fine friendship—smashed—and you growing stupidly sentimental. I didn't think it of you. Please go away. You are distressing me.”
He smiled at her tenderly, forgivingly, wistfully, but she did not see it. “Then it is really good-by,” he murmured with mock dolorousness.
She nodded her bowed head. “Yes,” she whispered. “After all, I have some pride, you know. You mustn't presume to be the butterfly preaching contentment to the toad in the dust.”