There were reasons that made him by no means sure, yet he nevertheless answered "Tremendously"; which she took in as if it were all she had wished to prove.

Then, "A man in trouble MUST be possessed somehow of a woman," she said; "if she doesn't come in one way she comes in another." "Why do you call me a man in trouble ?" "Ah because that's the way you strike me." She spoke ever so gently and as if with all fear of wounding him while she sat partaking of his bounty.

"AREn't you in trouble ?" He felt himself colour at the question, and then hated that--hated to pass for anything so idiotic as woundable.

Woundable by Chad's lady, in respect to whom he had come out with such a fund of indifference--was he already at that point?
Perversely, none the less, his pause gave a strange air of truth to her supposition; and what was he in fact but disconcerted at having struck her just in the way he had most dreamed of not doing?
"I'm not in trouble yet," he at last smiled.

"I'm not in trouble now." "Well, I'm always so.