The thought seemed to occur to her, too, and she looked up quickly, asking if I had anything to fear.
“Only for you,” I said.
“For me? Why? I am not afraid of such men. I have servants on whom I can call to disembarrass me of such people.” She hesitated; the memory of her deception, of what she had suffered at Buckhurst’s hands, brought a glint of anger into her beautiful eyes.
“My innocence shames me,” she said. “I merited what I received in such company. It was you who saved me from myself.”
“A noble mind thinks nobly,” I said. “Theirs is the shame, not yours, that you could not understand treachery—that you never can understand it. As for me, I was an accident, which warned you in time that all the world was not as good and true as you desired to believe it.”
She sat looking at me curiously. “I wonder,” she said, “why it is that you do not know your own value?”
“My value—to whom?”
“To ... everybody—to the world—to people.”
“Am I of any value to you, madame?”
The pulsing moments passed and she did not answer, and I bit my lip and waited. At last she said, coolly: 326 “A man must appraise himself. If he chooses, he is valuable. But values are comparative, and depend on individual taste.... Yes, you are of some value to me,... or I should not be here with you,... or I should not find it my pleasure to be here—or I should not trust you, come to you with my petty troubles, ask your experience to help me, perhaps protect me.”