“It’s--it’s your honesty, I think. There’s a quality of frankness about you that could be--well, almost brutal, I think. Do you know what I mean?”
“I suppose I am a crank. That is American enough, is it not?” she laughed. “A crank about the truth. I hate anything that even suggests a lie, or a dodging, or an evasion. So perhaps I should not like your newspaper profession.”
“But that’s just it!” he cried eagerly. “If one had a paper of one’s own, he could make his own rules for the game.”
“If he were big enough--and brave enough.”
“Brave enough,” he repeated. “Eli Wade said that about you, too. Reading your character from your shoes, you know. That you had courage and honesty. I think he thought it a rare thing in a woman.”
“It is not,” she flashed. “But if I have, it is no credit to me. I have wholly loved and trusted only one person on earth. That was my father, and he was the soul of truth. So, some of my friends laugh at me a little and think me a crank, because I have--what do you Americans--_we_ Americans say?--no use for any one whom I cannot wholly trust.”
“Perhaps. If I were, it would be because I could not help it. I think that I do things because something inside makes me before I have even time to consider, sometimes.”
“Like your standing up alone at the Federated German meeting. By the way, I brought my story of it for you to read.”
She held out her hand for the proofs. “I am glad,” she said.
She read it, slowly and studiously, and as she read an expression, new to Jeremy in the changeful charm of her face, puzzled his watchful eyes.
“It is very vivid,” she said, “and enthusiastic.”
She rose. On their way back to the Pritchard house she plied him with questions bearing on the technique of journalism. As he stood, bareheaded under the porch light looking up at her, she asked:
“I love it. But I am glad that it was not published.”
“There is too much Me in it.” She paused. “Did I seem to you like that--then?”
She shook her head. “I am glad that it was not published,” she repeated. “It would have said to too many people--” She hesitated.
For the first time her eyes faltered before his. They were hesitant, and deep-shadowed and troubled.
“What should have been said to only one.”