eserve that you should risk your life nursing them; they simply
deserve to be left to suffer."

She looked at him for a minute, as if earnestly trying to master a view
of the case new to her.

"Yes," speaking slowly. He saw that her hands, which were clasped in her
lap, pressed themselves more closely together--"yes, that is what they
deserve; but, you see, they are very ignorant. They do not see the
importance of these precautions; they have not believed me; they will
not believe you. They think quite honestly and truly that they will get
on well enough in doing their own way."

"Pig-headed!" commented Caius. Then, perceiving that he had not quite
carried her judgment along with his: "You yourself, madam, have admitted
that they do not deserve that either you or I should sacrifice our lives
to them."

"Ah, no," she replied, trouble of thought again in her eyes; "they do
not deserve that. But what do we deserve--you and I?"

There was no studied effect in the question. She was like one trying to
think more clearly by expressing her thought aloud.

"Madam," replied he, the smile of gallantry upon his lips, "I have no
doubt that you deserve the richest blessings of earth and heaven. For
myself----" He shrugged his shoulders, just about to say conventionally,
flippantly, that he was a sad, worthless fellow, but in some way her
sincerity made him sincere, and he finished: "I do not know that I have
done anything to forfeit them."

He supposed, as soon as he had said the words, that she would have a
theological objection to this view, and oppose it by rote; but there was
nothing of disapproval in her mien; there was even a gleam of greater
kindliness for him in her eye, and she said, not in answer, but as
making a remark by the way:

"That is just as I supposed when I asked you to come. You are like the
young ruler, who could not have been conceited because our Lord felt
greatly attracted to him."

Before this Caius had had a pleasing consciousness, regarding himself as
an interesting stranger talking to a handsome and interested woman. Now
he had wit enough to perceive that her interest in him never dipped to
the level of ordinary social relationships. He felt a sense of
remoteness, and did not even blush, though knowing certainly that
satire, although it was not in her mind, was sneering at him from behind
the circumstance.

The lady went right on, almost without pause, taking up the thread of
her argument: "B