Philip looked at his companion keenly. And Reuben, looking back at him as keenly, said, after a silence of a few moments,—
"I don't think you'll ever marry her either, Phil."
"Marry!" said Phil, with a deep, honest blush,—"who talks of that?"
"You, in your heart, Phil. Do you think I am blind? Do you think I have not seen that you have loved her, Phil, ever since you knew what it was to love a woman? Do you think, that, as a boy, you ever imposed upon me with your talk about that handsome Suke Boody, the tavern-keeper's daughter? Good Heavens! Phil, I think there were never two men in the world who talked their thoughts plainly to each other! Do you think I do not know that you have played the shy lover, because with your big heart you have yielded to what you counted a prior claim of mine,—because Adèle was one of us at the parsonage?"
"In such affairs," said Phil, with some constraint and not a little wounded pride, "I don't think men are apt to recognize prior claims."
Reuben replied only by a faint sardonic smile.
"You're a good fellow, Phil, but you won't marry her."
"Of course, then, you know why," said Phil, with something very like a sneer.
"Certainly," said Reuben. "Because you can't affront the world, because you are bound by its conventionalities and respectabilities, as I am not. I spurn them."
"Respectabilities!" said Phil, in amazement. "What does this mean? Just now she was a Puritan."