"Do I strike you as the sort of person who'd do that? You've had some opportunity of knowing me; and have I ever done anything for which you didn't first give me leave? If I'm here this evening and you're here, too, it's pure accident--as far as I'm concerned." I added, with some deepening of the tone, and speaking slowly so that she should get the meaning of the words: "I'll only venture to surmise that accidents of that kind don't happen for nothing." I could just make out her swimming eyes as they stared at me through the remaining veil, which was as black and thick as a widow's. "What do you mean?" "Wouldn't that depend on what you mean?" "If you think you're going to stop me--" "Dear Mrs. Brokenshire, I don't think anything at all. How can I? We're both going to Boston. By a singular set of circumstances we're seated side by side on the same train. What can I see more in the situation than that?" "You do see more." "But I'm trying not to. If you insist on betraying more, when perhaps I'd rather you wouldn't, well, that won't be my fault, will it?" "Because I've given you my confidence once or twice isn't a reason why you should take liberties all the rest of your life." To this, for a minute, I made no reply. "That hurts me," I said at last, "but I believe that when you've considered it you'll see that you've been unjust to me." "You've suspected me ever since I knew you." "I've only suspected you of a sweetness and kindness and goodness which I don't think you've discovered in yourself. I've never said anything of you, and never thought anything, but what I told Mr. Brokenshire two months ago, that you seem to me the loveliest thing God ever made. That you shouldn't live up to the beauty of your character strikes me as impossible. I'll admit that I think that; and if you call it suspicion--" Her anger began to pass into a kind of childish rebellion. "You've always talked to me about impossible things--" "I wasn't aware of it. One has to have standards of life, and do one's best to live up to them." "Why should I do my best to live up to them when other people-- Look at Madeline Pyne, and a lot of women I know!" "Do you think we can ever judge by other people, or take their actions as an example for our own? No one person can be more bound to do right than another; and yet when it comes to doing wrong it might easily be more serious for you than for Mrs. Pyne or for me." "I don't see why it should be." "Because you have a national position, one might even say an international position, and Mrs. Pyne hasn't, and neither have I. If we do wrong, only our own little circles have to know about it, and the harm we can do is limited; but if you do wrong it hurts the whole country." "I must say I don't see that." "You're the wife of a man who might be called a national institution--" "There are just as important men in the country as he."