"It was you who called it such," she answered, in a low voice.
A sleet-charged gust hurled itself against the door, and the lantern flickered.
"Wahn't it charity."
"It was friendship, Jethro. You ought to have known that, and you should not have brought back the book."
"Friendship," he repeated, "y-you said friendship?"
"Yes."
"M-meant friendship?"
"Yes," said Cynthia, but more faintly, and yet with a certain delicious fright as she glanced at him shyly. Surely there had never been a stranger man! Now he was apparently in a revery.
"G-guess it's because I'm not good enough to be anything more," he remarked suddenly. "Is that it?"
"You have not tried even to be a friend," she said.