Page:The Finer Grain (London, Methuen & Co., 1910).djvu/137

Rh She flushed a little at this reminder, but it scarcely pulled her up. "I never thought him low"—she made no more of it than that; "but I admit," she quite boldly smiled, "that I did think him wicked."

"And it's now your opinion that people can be wicked without being low?"

Prodigious, really, he found himself make out while she just hesitated, the opinions over the responsibility of which he should yet see her—and all as a consequence of this one afternoon of his ill-inspired absence—ready thus unnaturally to smirk at him.

"It depends," she complacently brought out, "on the kind."

"On the kind of wickedness?"

"Yes, perhaps. And "—it didn't at all baffle her—"on the kind of people."

"I see. It's all, my dear, I want to get at—for a proper understanding of the extraordinary somersault you appear to have turned. Puddick has just convinced you that his immoralities are the right ones?"

"No, love—nothing will ever convince me that any immoralities deserve that name. But some," she went on, "only seem wrong till they're explained."

"And those are the ones that, as you say, he has been explaining?" Traffle asked with a glittering, cheerful patience.

"He has explained a great deal, yes"—Jane bore up under it; "but I think that, by the opportunity