"And now you are here."
"Yes," I said quickly, a little timid of any silence between us, "and that's pleasant too. You can have no notion what a stiff, glaring garden it is up there—geraniums and gravel, you know, and windows, windows, windows. They are wonderfully kind to me—but I don't much love it."
"Then why stay?" he smiled. "Still, you are, at least, safely out of her clutches."
"Clutches!" I hated the way we were talking. "Thank you very much. You forget you are speaking of one of my friends. Besides, I can take care of myself." He made no answer.
"You are so gloomy," I continued. "So—oh, I don't know—about everything. It's because you are always cooped up in one place, I suppose. One must take the world—a little—as it is, you know. Why don't you go away; travel; see things? Oh, if I were a man."
His eyes watched my lips. Everything seemed to have turned sour. To have waited and dreamed; to have actually changed my clothes and come scuttling out in a silly longing excitement—for this. Why, I felt more lonely and helpless under Wanderslore's evening sky than ever I had been in my cedar-wood privacy in No. 2.
"I mean it, I mean it," I broke out suddenly. "You domineer over me. You pamper me up with silly stories—'trailing clouds of glory,' I suppose. They are not true. It's every one for himself in this world, I can tell you; and in future, please understand, I intend to be my own mistress. Simply because in a little private difficulty I asked you to help me——"
He turned irresolutely. "They have dipped you pretty deep in the dye-pot."
"And what, may I ask, do you mean by that?"