"It would be no use for you to read: I couldn't understand--I couldn't
attend to your voice and the book at the same time."
"We'd better wait, then," said Sophie, turning her clear, gray eyes upon
him with an expression of demure satire. "By-and-by, perhaps, it won't
have such a distracting effect upon you--when you come to know me
better. If not, I must keep away altogether."
Bressant's forehead grew red with sudden temper. He felt reproved, but
was not prepared to acknowledge that he had merited it.
"You're very generous of your voice!" exclaimed he, resentfully. "It's
your fault, not mine, that it's agreeable. You're not so kind as your
tone is."
"I don't mean to be unkind," said she, more gently, looking down. "You
don't seem to see the difference between unkindness and--what I said."
"What is the difference?" demanded he, taking her up.
Sophie paused a few moments, compassionating this great, willful boy,
and wondering what she could do for him. He had saved her father's life,
thereby imperilling his own, and disabling himself, and she could not
but admire and thank him for it. But his manner puzzled and annoyed her,
and was an obstacle in the way of her would-be helpfulness.
"You wouldn't ask that question, I think, if you'd had sisters, or a
mother," she said, at last. "I suppose you've lived only with men. But
you must learn how to treat young women from your own sense of what is
delicate and true."
Bressant stared and was silent: and Sophie herself was surprised at the
authoritative tone she was assuming toward a bearded man whom she had
never met before. But it was impossible to associate with Bressant
without either yielding to him, or, at least, behaving differently from
at other times, in one way or another. He was a magnet that drew from
people things unsuspected by themselves.
The pause was finally broken by the young man's accepting the situation
with a grace, and even docility, which was nearly too much for Sophie's
gravity.
"If you'll read, I will listen and understand it: you'd better try the
Bible. I have a great deal of work to do upon that, still: you'll find
one on the table by the window."
She got the book, with whose contents she was considerably better
acquainted than was the divinity student, and sat down to read,
marveling at the oddness of the situation; while he lay apparently
absorbed in the cracks on the ceiling. By degrees--for having carried
her point she could not help being more gracious--she began to allow a
little embroidery of conversation to weave itself about the sacred text
She spoke to Bressant about such simple and ordinary matters as went to
make up her life--the books she had read, the people she knew, the
country round about, a few of her more inward thoughts. He listened, and
said no more than enough to show he was attentive; sometimes making her
laugh by the shrewdness of his questions, and the quaintness of his
remarks.