Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/117

Rh 'What she does tell me may be?' Braddle smoked a moment in silence. 'But suppose it should be one of those things' He dropped again.

'Well, what things?'

'That a man can't like in any state of satisfaction.'

'I don't know what things you mean.'

'Come, I say—you do! Suppose it should be something really awful.'

'Well, her calculation is that, awful or not,' Chilver said, 'she'll have sufficiently attached you to make you willing either totally to forego her disclosure or else easily to bear it.'

'Oh, I know her calculation—which is very charming as well as very clever and very brave. But my danger'

'Oh, you think too much of your danger!'

Braddle stopped short. 'You don't!'

Chilver, however, who had coloured, spent much of the rest of the time they remained together in assuring him that he allowed this element all its weight. Only he came back at the last to what, practically, he had come back to in their other talks. 'I don't quite see why she doesn't strike you as worth almost any risk.'

'Do you mean that that's the way she strikes you?'

'Oh, I've not to tell you at this time of day,' said Chilver, 'how well I think of her.'

His companion was now seated on a bench from which he himself had shortly before risen. 'Ah, but I don't suppose you pretend to know her.'

'No—certainly not, I admit. But I don't see how you should either, if you come to that.'

'I don't; but it's exactly what I'm trying for, confound it! Besides,' Braddle pursued, 'she doesn't put you the great condition.'

Chilver took a few steps away; then as he came back, 'No; she doesn't!'

'Wait till some woman does,' Braddle went on. 'Then