"Yes, I know you did," he replied. "But I've disobeyed you. I wanted to see you, Mel.... I didn't know how badly until I got here."
"You should not want to see me at all. People will talk."
"So you care what people say of you?" he questioned, feigning surprise.
"Of me? No. I was thinking of you."
"You fear the poison tongues for me? Well, they cannot harm me. I'm beyond tongues or minds like those."
She regarded him earnestly, with serious gravity and slowly dawning apprehension; then, turning to arrange the violets in a tiny vase, she shook her head.
"Daren, you're beyond me, too. I feel a—a change in you. Have you had another sick spell?"
"Only for a day off and on. I'm really pretty well to-day. But I have changed. I feel that, yet I don't know how."
Lane could talk to her. She stirred him, drew him out of himself. He felt a strange desire for her sympathy, and a keen curiosity concerning her opinions.
"I thought maybe you'd been ill again or perhaps upset by the consequences of your—your action at Fanchon Smith's party."