beauty held the admiration of all women, for she was not eager for men's
company, and she kept her poise even with the man in scarlet near her,
glacially complacent, beautifully still, disconcertingly emotionless.
They did not know that the poise with her was to an extent as much a pose
as Charley's manner was to him.

"I hate you and despise you for a cold-blooded, selfish coward!" So that
was the way Kathleen felt! Charley's tongue touched his lips quickly,
for they were arid, and he slowly said:

"I assure you I have not tried to influence Billy. I have no remembrance
of his imitating me in anything. Won't you sit down? It is very
fatiguing, this heat."

Charley was entirely himself again. His words concerning Billy Wantage
might have been either an impeachment of Billy's character and, by
deduction, praise of his own, or it may have been the insufferable egoism
of the fop, well used to imitators. The veil between the two, which for
one sacred moment had seemed about to lift, was fallen now, leaded and
weighted at the bottom.

"I suppose you would say the same about John Brown! It is disconcerting
at least to think that we used to sit and listen to Mr. Brown as he waved
his arms gracefully in his surplice and preached sentimental sermons.
I suppose you will say, what we have heard you say before, that you only
asked questions. Was that how you ruined the Rev. John Brown--
and Billy?"

Charley was very thirsty, and because of that perhaps, his voice had an
unusually dry tone as he replied: "I asked questions of John Brown; I