to understand--definitely--that you DO renew your
offer?" she asked

"With all my heart! If you'll only let me----"

She raised a hand, as though to check him. "It's extremely
friendly of you--I DO believe you mean it as a friend--
but I don't quite understand why, finding me, as you say, so
well placed here, you should show more anxiety about my
future than at a time when I was actually, and rather
desperately, adrift."

"Oh, no, not more!"

"If you show any at all, it must, at any rate, be for
different reasons.--In fact, it can only be," she went on,
with one of her disconcerting flashes of astuteness, "for
one of two reasons; either because you feel you ought to
help me, or because, for some reason, you think you owe it
to Mrs. Leath to let her know what you know of me."

Darrow stood still in the path. Behind him he heard Effie's
call, and at the child's voice he saw Sophy turn her head
with the alertness of one who is obscurely on the watch.
The look was so fugitive that he could not have said wherein
it differed from her normal professional air of having her
pupil on her mind.

Effie sprang past them, and Darrow took up the girl's
challenge.