"I didn't want to get rid of him. It was so I could be alone."
"That's consistent! It was nothing of the kind. It was so you could be alone—with me."
She looked him over, flushing angrily. Then she deliberately turned her shoulder to him.
"You are very impudent," she remarked coldly. "You seem to forget that I don't even know you. I don't know why I sit here and listen, except that I am comfortable, and don't care to be driven away."
"You wanted to capture me some way or another," he went on musingly, catching a glimmer of the truth; "same as those poor fools out there in the sun. I'd just like to know how you meant to do it and what you'd have done to me. Would you have flattered me, or coaxed me, or what?"
The girl did not reply.
"How?" he urged, expecting an angry outburst, but profoundly indifferent to it.
"You are cruel," she answered softly, after a pause, "and very unjust." Her cheeks were glowing and there was a glint in her eye, but he could not see that. "They are only kind and good, not fools."
"Of course they're good, but they are good because you fool them into it," persisted Graham, spitefully pressing home his point. "You want to win 'em all, just like a woman, but you're too clumsy about it. Anybody can see through that sort of tommyrot, if he isn't a fool. So I call them fools, and I stick to it."
"With you it's different," she replied, hesitating almost before each word. "You ain't the same kind. I know it's foolish, but I can't help it, and I don't think I'm so much to blame. Perhaps I am trying to make them like me. Is there so much harm in that? Nobody has ever liked me before. I have no mother and no sisters—only Mike. I want to be liked, and—and—I'm sorry if you don't think I ought to, but it can't be helped."