"’Welcome’! I wonder? ’Twould be a very welcome thing to think I was welcome. But I’m not vain enough to think it. I only hope it." His personality and the masculine look and voice of him troubled her. A man who was obviously alive to sex and alert before women made her uncomfortable. The deep-eyed sly man--the man who was servile to women, who rushed to set chairs for them, who bowed to them and strove to catch their eye in public--these men she hated. Bartley was such a man, but he had long since perceived her dislike of gallantry and had given her no second cause to resent his attentions in that sort. His sustained reserve and apparent indifference had satisfied her and modified her former detestation; but it had not advanced him one span in her regard. She did not answer him now, and he continued-- "You see, Rhoda, very queer things happen--things that are deeper than we can explain or understand. And, before I speak, I want to go back a bit, because what I’m going to say may seem pleasanter in your ears if I remind you of a thing that happened long since. When I kissed you in the Pixies’ House you were terrible angered with me, and ’twas as natural for you to be so as ’twas for me to kiss you." "I don’t want to hear no more of that, and I won’t," she said fiercely. "You must," he answered. "You’ve no choice. You’re a just woman--as just and honourable as all who be called Bowden, and you must hear. I insist on it, for ’tis almost life or death to me. When I kissed you and you tore from me like a frightened bird, what did you say? You forget, but I remember, and I’ll remind you. You pressed your face against my cheek by accident, and I couldn’t stand it, and I kissed you and you said: ’You loathsome, Godless wretch! I could tear the skin off my face. I’d sooner the lightning had struck me.’ Then you fought your way out and trampled on my hand with your boot till the blood ran. Now, Rhoda, listen. I’m not loathsome, and I’m not Godless. You touched me accidentally and I took a terrible fierce fire from it. Why? Not because I’m a free liver; not because I would do the like from any maiden’s touch. Not from that--I swear it; but because that touch meant a great deal more to me than I understood. I did a thing any man may do under certain circumstances, Rhoda; but the circumstances were hid from me then, though they came out clear enough after. I loved you in the Pixies’ House, though I didn’t know it then; but my nature was quicker than my mind, and my nature took charge and made me do the thing I did. Not out of insult, but out of honour I did it; and I’ve honoured you more and more ever since that day. I honoured you when you helped David; and I knew then, as well as I know that God made me, that if you’d been in my corner instead of his I’d have beat him. I honoured you at his wedding--so graceful and lovely and above the rest as you were; and I honour you now, and I’ve been a better chap since I knew you.