This was actually better. It choked back the sobs rising in her throat. The stupid shock of it, his tasteless foolishness, helped her by its very folly to a sort of defense against the disastrous wave of emotion she might not have been able to control. She gathered herself together. “It must be an unusual experience,” she answered. “Well, it is--sort of,” he said, but in a manner curiously free from fatuous swagger. “I've had luck that way. I guess it's been because I'd GOT to make friends so as I could earn a living. It seems sort of queer to know that some one's got a grouch against me that--that I can't get away with.” She looked up the avenue to see how much farther they must walk together, since she was not “a sprinter” and could not get away from him. She thought she caught a glimpse through the trees of a dog-cart driven by a groom, and hoped she had not mistaken and that it was driving in their direction. “It must, indeed,” she said, “though I am not sure I quite understand what a grouch is.” “When you've got a grouch against a fellow,” he explained impersonally, “you want to get at him. You want to make him feel like a mutt; and a mutt's the worst kind of a fool. You've got one against me.” She looked before her between narrowed lids and faintly smiled--the most disagreeable smile she was capable of. And yet for some too extraordinary reason he went on. But she had seen men go on before this when all the odds were against them. Sometimes their madness took them this way. “I knew there was a lot against me when I came here,” he persisted. “I should have been a fool if I hadn't. I knew when you came that I was up against a pretty hard proposition; but I thought perhaps if I got busy and SHOWED you--you've got to SHOW a person--” “Showed me what?” she asked contemptuously. “Showed you--well--me,” he tried to explain. “You!” “And that I wanted to be friends,” he added candidly. Was the man mad? Did he realize nothing? Was he too thick of skin even to see? “Friends! You and I?” The words ought to have scorched him, pachyderm though he was. “I thought you'd give me a chance--a sort of chance--” She stopped short on the avenue. “You did?” She had not been mistaken. The dog-cart had rounded the far-off curve and was coming toward them. And the man went on talking. “You've felt every minute that I was in a place that didn't belong to me. You know that if the man that it did belong to was here, you'd be here with him. You felt as if I'd robbed him of it--and I'd robbed you. It was your home--yours. You hated me too much to think of anything else. Suppose--suppose there was a way I could give it back to you--make it your home again.”