“Are you telling me... that I must lose my friend?”
“Isn't that for you to say?”
“I don't know.” She faltered for words, but not the least in her intention. “Are you—what I have always heard you are?”
“Can you be a little more definite?” he asked gently.
“Well—dissipated! You're not that?”
“No. I've trodden down the appetite. I'm a total abstainer.”
“And you're not... those worse things that the papers say?”
“No.”
“I knew it.” Triumph rang in her voice. She breathed a generous trust. To know him for a true man it was necessary only to look into his fearless eyes set deep in the thin tanned face. It was impossible for anything unclean to survive with his humorous humility and his pervading sympathy and his love of truth. “I didn't care what they said. I knew it all the time.”
Her sweet faith was a thing to see with emotion. He felt tears scorch the back of his eyes.