"Jim, you are not pretending to court me, are you?"
"Not pretending.... No, I'm not doing it.... How can a beggar think of such a thing as courtship?"
"Beggars court most ardently—sometimes," she said, laughing tremulously. "But it's not hearts they usually court."
He knelt there, thinking a moment, head bent. Then he looked up at her.
"I have no reason to believe that you care for me," he said—"more than for any other man, I mean."
"You have no reason to believe so," she repeated, now thoroughly alarmed at what she'd done; and yet it was what she had deliberately set out to do. Her breath came unevenly. She strove to retain her composure, to recover the ground he seemed to have gained.
"Jim," she said, "you are too easily affected by your surroundings. A few trees, a summer sky, and a girl are destruction to you."
"You don't think that," he said quietly.
"I do, indeed. Witness my fate, and the plight of Christine."
He said, watching her: "Do you suppose that there is any sentimentality between Christine Rivett and me?"