"I see!" he murmured coldly. "You do not care to over-fatigue the
heart's action by unnecessary emotion. Quite right! If we were all as
wise as you are at your age, we might live much longer than we do. You
are very sensible, Lucy!--more sensible than I should have thought
possible for so young a woman."

She gave him a swift, uneasy glance. She was not quite sure of his mood.

"Friendship," he continued, speaking in a slow, meditative tone, "is a
good thing,--it may be, as you suggest, safer and sweeter than love. But
even friendship, to be worthy of its name, must be quite unselfish,--and
unselfishness, in both love and friendship, is rare."

"Very, very rare!" she sighed.

"You will be thinking of marriage _some_ day, if you are not thinking of
it now," he went on. "Would a husband's friendship--friendship and no
more--satisfy you?"

She gazed at him candidly.

"I am sure it would!" she said; "I'm not the least bit sentimental."

He regarded her with a grave and musing steadfastness. A very close
observer might have seen a line of grim satire near the corners of his
mouth, and a gleam of irritable impatience in his sunken eyes; but these
signs of inward feeling were not apparent to the girl, who, more than
usually satisfied with herself and over-conscious of her own beauty,
considered that she was saying just the very thing that he would expect
and like her to say.