Elisabeth was highly sensitive to the influences of nature, and, left to herself, would have leaned toward sentiment on such an afternoon as this; but she had seen that look in Alan's eyes, and that was enough for her.
"Do you know," began Tremaine, getting to work, "that I have been doing nothing lately but thinking about you?
And I have come to the conclusion that what appeals so much to me is your strength.

The sweetness which attracts some men has no charm for me; I am one of the men who above all things admire and reverence a strong woman, though I know that the sweet and clinging woman is to some the ideal of feminine perfection.

But different men, of course, admire different types." "Exactly; there is a Latin proverb, something about tots and sentences, which embodies that idea," suggested Elisabeth, with a nervous, girlish laugh.
Alan did not smile; he made it a rule never to encourage flippancy in women.
"It is hardly kind of you to laugh at me when I am speaking seriously," he said, "and it would serve you right if I turned my horse's head round and refused to let you hear your Bishop.

But I will not punish you this time; I will heap coals of fire on your head by driving on." "Oh! don't begin heaping coals of fire on people's head, Mr.Tremaine; it is a dangerous habit, and those who indulge in it always get their fingers burned in the end--just as they do when they play with edged tools, or do something (I forget what) with their own petard." There was a moment's silence, and then Alan said-- "It makes me very unhappy when you are in a mood like this; I do not understand it, and it seems to raise up an impassable barrier between us." "Please don't be unhappy about a little thing like that; wait till you break a front tooth, or lose your collar-stud, or have some other real trouble to cry over.

But now you are making a trouble out of nothing, and I have no patience with people who make troubles out of nothing; it seems to me like getting one's boots spoiled by a watering-cart when it is dry weather; and that is a thing which makes me most frightfully angry." "Do many things make you angry, I wonder ?" "Some things and some people." "Tell me what sort of people make a woman of your type angry." Elisabeth fell into the trap; she could never resist the opportunity of discussing herself from an outside point of view.