He looked at her reflectively.
"Yes, you are capable of being sorry," he decided. For a few moments
of silence his eyes rested upon the view spread before him. To give the
expression of dignified reflection was not a bad idea either.
"Do you know," he said at length, "that you produce an extraordinary
effect upon me, Betty?"
She was occupying herself by adding a few stitches to one of Rosy's
ancient strips of embroidery, and as she answered, she laid it flat upon
her knee to consider its effect.
"Good or bad?" she inquired, with delicate abstraction.
He turned his face towards her again--this time quickly.
"Both," he answered. "Both."
His tone held the flash of a heat which he felt should have startled her
slightly. But apparently it did not.
"I do not like 'both,'" with composed lightness. "If you had said that
you felt yourself develop angelic qualities when you were near me,
I should feel flattered, and swell with pride. But 'both' leaves me
unsatisfied. It interferes with the happy little conceit that one is
an all-pervading, beneficent power. One likes to contemplate a
large picture of one's self--not plain, but coloured--as a wholesale
reformer."
"I see.
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