“You and I have been strangely placed. I knew that the conventions of the best-bred people mean much to you, and I have merely respected your natural and proper regard for them. Under these circumstances it was not possible for me to make the first effort to be--friendly, if you will permit the expression.” She smiled, but the manliness of the rebuke and its entire justice made her secretly resent it. She was determined to hold herself perfectly in hand, for a serious purpose now moved her, and she would not be balked. “That is all in the past now,” she said. “I have learned to know you as a man of the finest sense of honor, proud, reserved, and self-sacrificing. It would not have been possible for any other sort of man to treat a woman as you have treated me. No, don’t interrupt me. There is nothing but common sense and simple justice in what I am saying, and unless you let me say it you will be harsh and cruel. After all that you have done for me, it is my right to tell you how I feel about it.” He looked so embarrassed and miserable that she laughed outright; and the music of that rare note sounded in his heart; for it was not a cruel laugh, but merry and hearty, as one would laugh at the comical discomfiture of a friend; and as such it fulfilled its purpose. Thus the ice that had filled the cabin was broken, in a measure, at last, and this at once eased the gloom and coldness of the wretched lives imprisoned therein. From that beginning the convalescent drifted easily and gracefully into an account of her world of wealth and pleasure and fashion. She realized that she must first open her own life before she could expect her host to give her a view of his and of the nearer and stranger things that impinged upon her. Her voice was smooth and musical. She dwelt particularly upon the lighter and fashionable side of her life, because she believed that the tact and refinement of the man who listened so well, yet so silently, were born of such a life, and that he had deliberately withdrawn himself from it. Matters went more smoothly after that day. But the young woman was finally forced to accept her defeat,--she had opened her own simple, vacant life, but had gained not a glimpse into his. And she realized, further, that all the advances toward a friendlier understanding had been made by her, and none by him; that his manner toward her, with all its tireless watchfulness, its endless solicitude, its total extinction of every selfish thought, its impenetrable reserve, had not changed one jot or tittle. Then a bitter resentment filled her, and she hated him and determined to torture him.