To this Miss Fern answered, with many pauses, that she had not intended to accuse her visitor of anything. And once more--with evident distress--she begged to be permitted to drop the matter and return to her reading.
"Very well," he assented, thinking he had annoyed her as much as was advisable for the present. "As they say in parliamentary bodies, we will lay the question on the table, from which it can be taken at some more fitting time. I am as anxious as you can be to get into Chapter II."
She read this chapter to the end, and paused a few seconds to see if he had any comments to make, but he shook his head without breaking silence, and she went on with the story. He pursued the same plan till the end of the fifth chapter.
"It is interesting, exciting and true," he remarked, referring to the closing scene. "And I cannot help feeling arise in my brain the question that Mr. Gouger put when he read it: How could a young, innocent girl like you depict that situation with such absolute fidelity."
He had come to the point with a vengeance. But to Miss Fern his manner was far more agreeable than if he had approached it by stealth, or in an insinuating way. She had anticipated something of the sort and had tried to prepare herself to meet it.
"Does not nature teach us some things?" she asked, speaking straightforwardly, though her color heightened in spite of her efforts. "Given a certain condition, an intelligent mind can prophesy results."
He shook his head in mild disagreement with her.
"Gouger is an expert, and he denies this, as a regular rule, at least. You should have heard him argue it with Roseleaf. 'Either throw yourself into a love affair,' he said, 'or never try to depict one.' Excuse me, Miss Fern, you bade me be frank--"
She assented, with a grave nod of her shapely head.
"You may have been in love--I do not ask you whether you have or not--but you cannot have known personally of the sort of love that you have depicted in these pages. I call it little less than miraculous that you should draw the scene so accurately."
She colored again, this time partly with pleasure, for she was very susceptible to compliments.
"Perhaps your statement may explain to you," she said, pointedly, "what I meant a few minutes ago by calling you 'a man of the world.' You recognize at a glance what I had to construct from my imagination."