Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/246

230 hurriedly, in a low voice, when Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour had gone to the inn door to revive themselves with blood-warming cordials after their thrilling experience. "I should like to, only—it seems to go beyond compliments."

"I hate compliments, even when I deserve them, which I don't now," replied the young man whom I 'd been comparing sentimentally in my mind with the sun-god, steering his chariot of fire up and down the steeps of heaven from dawn to sunset. "And I 'd hate them above all from my—from my little pal."

Nothing he could have named me would have pleased me as well. During the wild climb, and wilder drop, we had hardly spoken to each other, yet I felt that I could never misunderstand him, or try frivolously to aggravate him again. He was too good for all that, too good to be played with.

"You are a man—a real man," I said to myself. I felt humble compared with him, an insignificant wisp of a thing, who could never do anything brave or great in life; and so I was proud to be called his "pal." When he asked if I, too, did n't need some cordial, I only laughed, and said I had just had one, the strongest possible.

"So have I," he answered. "And now we ought to be going on. Look at those shadows, and it 's a good way yet to Florac, at the entrance of the gorge."

Already night was stretching long gray, skeleton fingers into the late sunshine, as if to warm them at its glow before snuffing it out.

It was easier to say we ought to go, however, than to