He bent toward her, feeling her charm, yielding to the fascination she had for him.
"No," he said gently and kindly.

"I don't see; I don't understand you." She saw and felt the change in him; but she was on guard against a reaction.

He could not know how her heart throbbed, or how it had seemed for a moment that words would not come to her lips.
"It is to you; it is to yourself that you must make the reparation.

And you must make it now.

There may never be a time like this; it is your great opportunity." "You think, you ask--" he began warily; and she was quick to see that the precise moment for the full stroke had not come; that the ground required preparation.
"I think," she interrupted, smiling gravely, "that you want me to be your friend.