What a pretty wondering look she gave him. One of the flashes of the sunlight came then. But then came an amused expression.
"What would be the good of that, Mr. Linden?"
"I should have the pleasure of doing them."
"I believe you would," said Faith. "I think the only things quite impossible to you are wrong things."
"The only thing you ever did ask of me was impossible," he said with a smile, upon which there was a shadow too—as if the recollection pained him. "Child, how could you?—It half broke my heart to withstand you so, do you know that? I want the almost impossible things to make me forget it."
Her lip trembled instantly and her command of herself was nearly gone. She had risen for something, and as he spoke she came swiftly behind him, putting herself where he could not see her face, and laid her hand on his shoulder. It lay there as light as thistle-down; but it was Faith's mute way of saying a great many things that her voice could not.
Very quick and tenderly Mr. Linden drew her forward again, and tried the power of his lips to still hers.
"Hush, dear child!" he said—"you must not mind any thing I say,—I am the last person in the world you ought to be afraid of. And you must not claim it as your prerogative to get before me in danger and behind me at all other times—because that is just reversing the proper order of things. Faith, I am going to ask an almost impossible thing of you."
"What is it?" Faith was secretly glad, for afraid of his requests she could not be.
"You will try to do it?"