After a transient effort to ignore everything and talk in her usual
superficial manner, she became more and more silent and oppressed,
and, at last said, somewhat abruptly:
"Mr. Van Berg, I am weary, and I imagine you are too. I think I
will say good-night."
"I scarcely wonder that you are fatigued. You have had a trying
day."
"It has been a horrid day," she said, emphatically.
"It might have ended much worse, nevertheless."
"Possibly," she admitted with a shrug.
"You have more reason to congratulate yourself than you imagine,
Miss Mayhew. Even that disagreeable souvenir of our morning peril,
your lameness, has disappeared, and you might have been maimed for
life."
"My lameness, like my courage, was chiefly a fraud to begin with,
and soon disappeared; but I have other souvenirs of that occasion
that I cannot get rid of so easily."
"If I am one of them, you are right, Miss Mayhew; I shall hold you
to our agreement this morning. You put me on my good behavior--have
I not behaved well?"
"Yes, better than I have. I was not referring to you personally,
but to certain memories."
"We agreed to let by-gones be by-gones."
"But others are not parties to this agreement, and every reference
to the affair is odious to me.
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