“What? Being honest?”
“Well, no—Or, yes!”
“It isn’t for you.”
“Thank you. But I’m not under discussion now.”
“Well, in the first place,” he began, “I was afraid of you when we met.”
“Afraid of me?”
“That isn’t the word, perhaps. We’ll say ashamed of myself. Mrs. Maynard told me about you, and I thought you would despise me for not doing or being anything in particular. I thought you must.”
“Indeed!”
He hesitated, as if still uncertain of her mood from this intonation, and then he went on: “But I had some little hope you would tolerate me, after all. You looked like a friend I used to have.—Do you mind my telling you?”
“Oh, no. Though I can’t say that it’s ever very comfortable to be told that you look like some one else.”