“Do you think she loves Haynes?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do know. You think that she doesn’t. And do you think he loves her?”
“Why should I tell you, when you will only browbeat and contradict me? I know this, that there is the most beautiful affection between them that I have ever known between a man and a girl. With two people less fine than Helga and Harris Haynes it could not be so. You aren’t capable of understanding that sort of thing. And so you would destroy this for the mere whim of a boy!”
“It is not the whim of a boy,” returned Dick sternly. “It has made Everard a man. I think she loves him.”
“What if she does?” said the girl recklessly.
“You mean you would have her marry Haynes without love?”
“Yes,” said Dolly, too far committed to back down now; but within herself she was saying: “Oh, you wretched little liar!”
“Ah!” observed Dick with a change to cold courtesy that stung her more than his wrath. “I haven’t had the good fortune to meet many girls so advanced in their views. Myself, both as a physician and unprofessionally, I am simple enough to think that loveless marriages are unfortunate.”
“Oh, sentimentality has its place, I suppose,” said the imp within Dolly.