remained with him. "She doesn't want me to stay, does she?" he inquired after the woman had retreated, and the study door was shut. "Bless my soul," the scholar had declared, "why not? Of course, she's delighted!"
Carron accepted the courteous rebuke, but kept his first opinion on the subject. He liked Mrs. Rader; he liked being liked for its own sake, and that air she had of suspecting him touched his vanity.
She, whom he had thought no problem at all in the beginning, was evidently not confiding. It was the man, the shy, self-absorbed scholar, who had so readily given his allegiance.
Unconscious partisan Rader was! He warmed himself at Carron's vitality as at a fire. Stretching out his long legs beneath the table, lounging on his background of books, "How about some sherry?" he proposed. "I expect to be up for a couple of hours more."
Carron had not realized how strongly his story, or himself, or both together, had touched the scholar's fancy until, after the interruption at an advanced hour, he showed an inclination to resume their companionship. He had pushed aside his solitary self-evolved thoughts for the talk of the horse-breaker just as he had put aside his Greek book to make room for the glasses. Still from a
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