Elfrida rose from a confusion of sheets of manuscript upon the table and came forward, holding out her hand with an odd gleam in her eyes, and an amused, slightly excited smile about her lips.
"How do you, do?" she said, with rather ostentatiously suppressed wonder. "Please sit down, but not in that chair. It is not quite reliable. This one, I think is better. How are—how are you?"
The slight emphasis she placed on the last word was airy and regardless. Janet would have preferred to have been met by one of the old affectations; she would have felt herself taken more seriously.
"It's very late to come, and I interrupt you," she said awkwardly, glancing at the manuscript.
"Not at all. I am very happy—"
"But of course I had a special reason for coming. It is serious enough, I think, to justify me."
"What can it be!"
"Don't, Elfrida," Janet cried passionately. "Listen to me. I have come to try to make things right again between us—to ask you to forgive me for speaking as I—as I did about your writing that day. I am sorry—I am, indeed."
"I don't quite understand. You ask me to forgive you—but what question is there of forgiveness? You had a perfect right to your opinion, and I was glad to have it at last from you, frankly."
"But it offended you, Elfrida. It is what is accountable for the—the rupture between us."