Young Haight looked into the blue flame of the gas-log, almost the only modern innovation throughout the entire house, and was silent for a moment; then he leaned his elbows on his knees and, still looking at the flame, replied:
"I don't know about that. You have been a considerable help to _me_."
"To _you_!" exclaimed Turner, surprised. "A help to _you_? Why, how do you mean?"
"Well," he answered, still without looking at her, "one always has one's influence, you know."
"Ah, lots of influence _I_ have over anybody," retorted Turner, incredulously.
"Yes, you have," he insisted. "You have plenty of influence over the people that care for you. You have plenty of influence over me."
Turner, very much embarrassed, and not knowing how to answer, bent down to the side of the mantelpiece and turned up the flame of the gas-log a little. Young Haight continued, almost as embarrassed as she:
"I suppose I'm a bad lot, perhaps a little worse than most others, but I think--I hope--there's some good in me. I know all this sounds absurd and affected, but _really_ I'm not posing; you won't mind if I speak just as I think, for this once. I promise," he went on with a half smile, "not to do it again. You know my mother died when I was little and I have lived mostly with men. You have been to me what the society of women has been to other fellows. You see, you are the only girl I ever knew very well--the only one I ever wanted to know. I have cared for you the way other men have cared for the different women that come into their lives; as they have cared for their mothers, their sisters--and their wives. You have already influenced me as a mother or sister should have done; what if I should ever ask you to be--to be the _other_ to me, the one that's best of all?"
Young Haight turned toward her as he finished and looked at her for the first time. Turner was still very much embarrassed.
"Oh, I'm very glad if I've been a help to--to anybody--to you," she said, confusedly. "But I never knew that you cared--that you thought about me--in that way. But you mustn't, you know, you mustn't care for me in that way. I ought to tell you right away that I never could care for you more than--I always have done; I mean care for you only as a very, very good friend. You don't know, Dolly," she went on eagerly, "how it hurts me to tell you so, because I care so much for you in every other way that I wouldn't hurt your feelings for anything; but then you know at the same time it would hurt you a great deal more if I _shouldn't_ tell you, but encourage you, and let you go on thinking that perhaps I liked you more than any one else, when I _didn't_. Now wouldn't that be wrong? You don't know how glad it makes me feel that I have been of some good to you, and that is just why I want to be sincere _now_ and not make you think any less of me--think any worse of me."