"Oh, leave me, leave me for a little while," she
prayed him brokenly. "I can't talk any more now; I assure you I can't."
He begged her pardon for his vehemence. "I'm pretty bad myself, you know.
This kind of thing plays the deuce with a man's heart."
She could thank him with a woman's for this naive assurance. "I don't
doubt you for a moment," she said. "You have been rather eloquent."
"Eloquent, my dear!" He raised his eyebrows. "You might spare me
congratulations upon my eloquence. I don't deserve very much, perhaps--
though God knows I tried to make you comfortable; but perhaps I deserve
credit for sincerity."
She was not to be drawn that way. "I don't doubt your sincerity in the
least," she said. "But I wish you to allow for mine. I am changed, and
have told you so."
"I can see that you are. Heaven knows that. Perhaps I deserve it: I don't
know. It's hardly for me to talk about my own points, is it? Criticism,
from whichever side it comes, does seem to me out of place in a love-
scene. And you found me eloquent in spite of it! Surely I may congratulate
myself upon that."
She looked at him standing before her, his arms folded; she showed him a
face too dreary to be moved by sarcasm.
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