"At the same place,--Decker's Ferry, you know." He smiled, indulgent to her crass ignorance of roads and localities. "Only we shall be a day longer getting there. We are still on the south side of the river, you remember?" "Oh, of course!" said Daphne, who remembered nothing of the kind. "It was a brutal fake, our springing this place on you for Pilgrim Station," he murmured. "It has all been a mistake,--our coming, I mean; at least I think so." It was some comfort to Thane to hear her say it,--he had been so forcibly of that opinion himself all along; but he allowed the admission to pass. "It must have been a hard journey for you," he exerted himself to say, speaking in a surface voice, while his thoughts were sinking test-pits through layers of crusted consciousness into depths of fiery nature underneath. She answered in the same perfunctory way: "You have been very kind; uncle has depended on you so much. Your advice and help have been everything to him." He took her up with needless probity: "Whatever you do, don't thank me! It's bad enough to have Mr. Withers heaping coals of fire on my head. He gives me the place always, in regard to his son, of an intimate friend; which I never was, and God knows I never claimed to be! He took it for granted, somehow,--perhaps because of my letters at first, though any brute would have done as much at a time like that! Afterwards I would have set him right, but I was afraid of thrusting back the friendly imputation in his face. He credits me with having been this and that of a godsend to his son, when as a fact we parted, that last time, not even good friends. Perhaps you can forgive me for saying it? You see how I am placed!" This iron apology which some late scruple had ground out of Thane seemed to command Daphne's deepest attention. She gave it a moment's silence, then she said, "There is nothing that hurts one, I think, like being unable to feel as people take for granted one must and ought to feel." But her home application of it gave a slight deflection to Thane's meaning which he firmly corrected. "I felt all right; so did he, I dare say, but we never let each other know how we felt. Men don't, as a rule. Your uncle takes for granted that I knew a lot about him,--his thoughts and feelings; that we were immensely sympathetic. Perhaps we were, but we didn't know it. We knew nothing of each other intimately. He never spoke to me of his private affairs but once, the night before he started. It was at Wood River. Some of us gave him a little supper. Afterwards we had some business to settle and I was alone with him in his room. It was then I made my break; and--well, it ended as I say: we quarreled. It has hurt me since, especially as I was wrong." "What can men quarrel about when they don't know each other well? Politics, perhaps?" Daphne endeavored to give her words a general application.