"Would you worry if I were in trouble?"
"Naturally."
"Why?"
"Why? Because you are my friend. Why shouldn't I worry?"
"Do you really take our friendship as seriously as that?"
"Don't you?"
He changed countenance, hesitated, flicked the ashes from his cigarette. Suddenly he looked her straight in the face:
"Yes. I do take it seriously," he said in a voice so quietly and perhaps unnecessarily emphatic that, for a few moments, she found nothing to say in response.
Then, smilingly: "I am glad you look at it that way. It means that you will come back some day."