Page:Two Magics.djvu/194

186 “It so justifies me!”

“It does that, Miss!”

I couldn’t have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. “She’s so horrible?”

I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. “Really shocking.”

“And about me?”

“About you, Miss—since you must have it. It’s beyond everything, for a young lady; and I can’t think wherever she must have picked up”

“The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then!” I broke in with a laugh that was doubtless significant enough.

It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. “Well, perhaps I ought to also—since I’ve heard some of it before! Yet I can’t bear it,” the poor woman went on while, with the same movement, she glanced, on my dressing table, at the face of my watch. “But I must go back.”

I kept her, however. “Ah, if you can’t bear it!”

“How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just for that: to get her away. Far from this,” she pursued, “far from them”

“She may be different? She may be free?”