“Are you really questioning me, Mr. Plank?”
“Yes. You have been questioning me rather seriously—have you not?”
“I did not comprehend your definition of friendship. I did not agree with it. I questioned it, not you! That is all.”
Plank rested his head on one big hand and stared at the clusters of dim blossoms behind her; and after a while he said, as though thinking aloud:
“Many have taken my friendship for granted, and have never offered their own in return. I do not know about Mr. Siward. There is nothing I can do for him, nothing he can do for me. If there is to be friendship between us it will be disinterested; and I would rather have that than anything in the world, I think.”
There was a pause; but when Sylvia would have broken it his gesture committed her to silence with the dignity one might use in checking a persistent child.
“You question my definition of friendship, Miss Landis. I should have let your question pass, however keenly it touched me, had it not also touched him. Now I am going to say some things which lie within the straight and narrow bounds I spoke of. I never knew a man I cared for as much as I care for Mr. Siward. I know why, too. He is disinterested. I do not believe he wastes very many thoughts on me. Perhaps he will. I want him to like me, if it's possible. But one thing you and I may be sure of: if he does not care to return the friendship I offer him he will never accept anything else from me, though he might give at my request; and that is the sort of a man he is; and that is why he is every inch a man; and so I like him, Miss Landis. Do you wonder?”
She did not reply.
“Do you wonder?” he repeated sharply.
“No,” she said.