Another time she might have seen the fine thing back of those words, but she took such finenesses of Richard Cobden for granted, while he rarely could understand that she saw anything but his faults. “It’s queer,” he said, in the same dull hopeless way. “I stand to you as the most staid and changeless person, but to my family I am dangerous, a fulminant. They love and trust me, but watch me with fierce concern. Already I’ve broken more Cobden convictions in twenty-five years than all my relatives in all their years.” His face glanced wearily toward her from the lights of the street, as he drove. “You’ve let me understand too much for one Sunday afternoon,” she said in an awed voice, “and it feels colder and lonelier than ever before. I even see something of the coming years, Dicky. I see that it means Fate, when you say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I see that you turn to a girl to stay. I see you don’t cheat. I see that I’m volatile compared; that my honesty is a fierce effort, a deadly self-conscious effort, and yours is an established habit. I’m clumsy at my honesty. I love it terribly, but it is still on the outside of me--something to attain.” She sank back, laughing. “I wonder if it will stay as deadly clear as this?” “You are not making it quite clear to me,” he said. “I must. Oh, I must. Dicky, please open your soul and listen to me--hard, hard! While it’s clear, I must talk. You’ve chosen to be my friend. You’ve chosen not to take the easier course of hating me. I understand all that better now than the night of the Punjabi dinner.” “I do, too,” said Cobden, and bitterness of the African rivers was in his words. “Do I have to begin by saying how dear you are--how kind, how utterly good it is to know you; what it means to have faith and trust in one man?” “Please not, Pidge.” “But never forget it, Dicky. It’s the pedestal upon which everything’s builded. Always remember that I know you underneath; that I turn to you in trouble--not like a brother or father or lover, but what our word _comrade_ means--what it will sometime mean to many people! That’s you. But, Dicky, because I know you--I can look away! Don’t you see--you’re like something done! Having found you, I can turn to other things.” “I’ll try to see that, but most people find each other differently, to stay----” “It’s because they don’t find what I’ve found. I don’t know what I want, only I know there are terrible undone things in me, that other people stir to life. I’m lost in persons. Miss Claes and Nagar lose themselves in nations. You’re getting to be like them, but I see it all in the personal!... Listen, Dicky, if you were to get a woman to take to your house--one ready to go in and be a Cobden and a mother of Cobdens--I could love her! I could hold to you just as close, though secretly. I would expect you to be my _comrade_ just the same--I mean just between us--never on the outside, perhaps. What I mean is, it wouldn’t hurt me--not the thing we have together.”