"Are you?"

"I ought to be anyway," he said.

It was unfortunate; an utterly inexcusable laughter seemed to bewitch
them, hovering always close to his lips and hers.

"How can you laugh!" she said. "How dare you! I don't care for you
nearly as violently as I did, Mr. Siward. A friendship between us would
not be at all good for me. Things pass too swiftly--too intimately. There
is too much mockery in you--" She ceased suddenly, watching the sombre
alteration of his face; and, "Have I hurt you?" she asked penitently.

"No."

"Have I, Mr. Siward? I did not mean it." The attitude, the words,
slackening to a trailing sweetness, and then the moment's silence,
stirred him.

"I'm rather ignorant myself of violent emotion," he said. "I suspect
normal people are. You know better than I do whether love is usually a
sedative."

"Am I normal--after what I have confessed?" she asked. "Can't love be
well-bred?"

"Perfectly I should say--only perhaps you are not an expert--"

"In what?"