"Jacqueline!" he broke out impulsively. "I want you to be my guest here. Won't you let me arrange with some old gorgon to chaperon you? I can do it! And with the gorgon's head on your moral shield you can silence anybody!"
He began to laugh; she sat twisting her fingers on her lap and looking up at him in a lovely, distressed sort of way, so adorably perplexed and yet so pliable, so soft and so apprehensive, that his laughter died on his lips, and he sat looking down at her in silence.
After a while he spoke again, almost mechanically:
"I'm trying to think how we can best be on equal terms, Jacqueline. That is all. After your work is done here, I want to see you here and elsewhere—I want you to come back at intervals, as my guest. Other people will ask you. Other people must be here, too, when you are. I know some who will accept you on your merits—if you are properly chaperoned. That is all I am thinking about. It's fairer to you."
But even to himself his motive was not clear—only the rather confused idea persisted that women in his own world knew how to take care of themselves, whatever they chose to do about it—that Jacqueline would stand a fairer chance with herself, and with him, whatever his intentions might really be. It would be a squarer deal, that was all.
She sat thinking, one slim forefinger crook'd under her chin; and he saw her blue eyes deep in thought, and the errant lock curling against her cheek. Then she raised her head and looked at him:
"Do you think it best?"
"Yes—you adorable little thing!"
She managed to sustain his gaze: