"Cannot even you see that I am not in the mood to accept confidences?"

she exclaimed.

"Yes, I can. But you"re going to accept this one," steadily. "No," as she made a swift movement, "I"m not going to clear the way till I"ve done."

"I insist!" she cried. "If you were--"

He put out his hand, but not to touch her.

"I know what you"re going to say. If I were a gentleman--Well, I"m not laying claim to that--but I"m a sort of a man, anyhow, though you mayn"t think it. And you"re going to listen."

She began to stare at him. It was not the ridiculous boyish drop in his voice which arrested her attention. It was a fantastic, incongruous, wholly different thing. He had suddenly dropped his slouch and stood upright. Did he realize that he had slung his words at her as if they were an order given with the ring of authority?

"I"ve not bucked against anything you"ve said or done since you"ve been here," he went on, speaking fast and grimly. "I didn"t mean to. I had my reasons. There were things that I"d have given a good deal to say to you and ask you about, but you wouldn"t let me. You wouldn"t give me a chance to square things for you--if they could be squared.

You threw me down every time I tried!"

He was too wildly incomprehensible with his changes from humanness to folly. Remembering what he had attempted to say on the day he had followed her in the avenue, she was inflamed again.

"What in the name of New York slang does that mean?" she demanded.

"Never mind New York," he answered, cool as well as grim. "A fellow that"s learned slang in the streets has learned something else as well. He"s learned to keep his eyes open. He"s on to a way of seeing things. And what I"ve seen is that you"re so doggone miserable that-- that you"re almost down and out."

This time she spoke to him in the voice with the quality of deadliness in it which she had used to her mother.

"Do you think that because you are in your own house you can be as intrusively insulting as you choose?" she said.

"No, I don"t," he answered. "What I think is quite different. I think that if a man has a house of his own, and there"s any one in big trouble under the roof of it--a woman most of all--he"s a cheap skate if he don"t get busy and try to help--just plain, straight help."

He saw in her eyes all her concentrated disdain of him, but he went on, still obstinate and cool and grim.

"I guess "help" is too big a word just yet. That may come later, and it mayn"t. What I"m going to try at now is making it easier for you-- just easier."

Her contemptuous gesture registered no impression on him as he paused a moment and looked fixedly at her.

"You just hate me, don"t you?" It was a mere statement which couldn"t have been more impersonal to himself if he had been made of wood.

"That"s all right. I seem like a low-down intruder to you. Well, that"s all right, too. But what ain"t all right is what your mother has set you on to thinking about me. You"d never have thought it yourself. You"d have known better."

"What," fiercely, "is that?"

"That I"m mutt enough to have a mash on you."

The common slangy cra.s.sness of it was a kind of shock. She caught her breath and merely stared at him. But he was not staring at her; he was simply looking straight into her face, and it amazingly flashed upon her that the extraordinary words were so entirely unembarra.s.sed and direct that they were actually not offensive.

He was merely telling her something in his own way, not caring the least about his own effect, but absolutely determined that she should hear and understand it.

Her caught breath ended in something which was like a half-laugh. His queer, sharp, incomprehensible face, his queer, unmoved voice were too extraordinarily unlike anything she had ever seen or heard before.

"I don"t want to be brash--and what I want to say may seem kind of that way to you. But it ain"t. Anyhow, I guess it"ll relieve your mind. Lady Joan, you"re a looker--you"re a beaut from Beautville. If I were your kind, and things were different, I"d be crazy about you-- crazy! But I"m not your kind--and things are different." He drew a step nearer still to her in his intentness. "They"re this different.

Why, Lady Joan! I"m dead stuck on another girl!"

She caught her breath again, leaning forward.

"Another--!"

"She says she"s not a lady; she threw me down just because all this darned money came to me," he hastened on, and suddenly he was imperturbable no longer, but flushed and boyish, and more of New York than ever. "She"s a little bit of a quiet thing and she drops her h"s, but gee--! You"re a looker --you"re a queen and she"s not. But Little Ann Hutchinson-- Why, Lady Joan, as far as this boy"s concerned"--and he oddly touched himself on the breast--"she makes you look like thirty cents."

Joan quickly sat down on the chair she had just left. She rested an elbow on the table and shaded her face with her hand. She was not laughing; she scarcely knew what she was doing or feeling.

"You are in love with Ann Hutchinson," she said, in a low voice.

"Am I?" he answered hotly. "Well, I should smile!" He disdained to say more.

Then she began to know what she felt. There came back to her in flashes scenes from the past weeks in which she had done her worst by him; in which she had swept him aside, loathed him, set her feet on him, used the devices of an ingenious demon to discomfit and show him at his poorest and least ready. And he had not been giving a thought to the thing for which she had striven to punish him. And he plainly did not even hate her. His mind was clear, as water is clear. He had come back to her this evening to do her a good turn--a good turn.

Knowing what she was capable of in the way of arrogance and villainous temper, he had determined to do her--in spite of herself--a good turn.

"I don"t understand you," she faltered.

"I know you don"t. But it"s only because I"m so dead easy to understand. There"s nothing to find out. I"m just friendly --friendly- -that"s all."

"You would have been friends with me! " she exclaimed. "You would have told me, and I wouldn"t let you! Oh!" with an impulsive flinging out of her hand to him, "you good --good fellow!"

"Good be darned! " he answered, taking the hand at once.

"You are good to tell me! I have behaved like a devil to you. But oh!

if you only knew!"

His face became mature again; but he took a most informal seat on the edge of the table near her.

"I do know--part of it. That"s why I"ve been trying to be friends with you all the time." He said his next words deliberately. "If I was the woman Jem Temple Barholm had loved wouldn"t it have driven me mad to see another man in his place--and remember what was done to him. I never even saw him, but, good G.o.d! "--she saw his hand clench itself-- "when I think of it I want to kill somebody! I want to kill half a dozen. Why didn"t they know it couldn"t be true of a fellow like that!"

She sat up stiffly and watched him.

"Do--you--feel like that--about him?"

"Do I!" red-hotly. "There were men there that knew him! There were women there that knew him! Why wasn"t there just one to stand by him?

A man that"s been square all his life doesn"t turn into a card-sharp in a night. d.a.m.n fools! I beg your pardon," hastily. And then, as hastily again: "No, I mean it. d.a.m.n fools!"

"Oh!" she gasped, just once.

Her pa.s.sionate eyes were suddenly blinded with tears. She caught at his clenched hand and dragged it to her, letting her face drop on it and crying like a child.

The way he took her utter breaking down was just like him and like no one else. He put the other hand on her shoulder and spoke to her exactly as he had spoken to Miss Alicia on that first afternoon.

"Don"t you mind me, Lady Joan," he said. "Don"t you mind me a bit.

I"ll turn my back. I"ll go into the billiard- room and keep them playing until you get away up-stairs. Now we understand each other, it"ll be better for both of us."

"No, don"t go! Don"t!" she begged. "It is so wonderful to find some one who sees the cruelty of it." She spoke fast and pa.s.sionately. "No one would listen to any defense of him. My mother simply raved when I said what you are saying."

"Do you want "--he put it to her with a curious comprehending of her emotion--"to talk about him? Would it do you good?"