Her negative, too, was more
unsympathetic than he had any reason to expect.
"No," she said; "it must be somebody else. Don't ask me. I should become
involved--I might do harm." She had surmounted her emotion; she was able
to look at the matter with surprising clearness and decision. "I should
do harm," she repeated.
"You don't count with her effect on you."
"You can't possibly imagine her effect on me. I'm not a man."
"But won't you take anything--about her--from me? You know I'm really
not a fool--not even very impressionable."
"Oh, no!" she said impatiently, "no--of course not."
"Pray, why?"
"There are other things to reckon with." She looked coldly beyond him
out of the window. "A man's intelligence when he is in love--how far can
one count on it?"
There was nothing but silence for that or perhaps the murmured "Oh, I
don't agree," with which Lindsay met it. He rode down her logic with a
simple appeal. "Then after all," he said, "you're not my friend."
It goaded her into something like an impertinence. "After you have
married her," she said, "you'll see."
"You will be hers then," he declared.
"I will be yours." Her eyes leaped along the prospect and rested on a
brass-studded Tartar shield at the other end of the room.
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