Dick accepted the compliment modestly.
"Some day you will speak of your kind with more respect," he suggested.
"But I hope not," said Heinmann. "For respect does not mean love in your language, and I hope to love all ladies—always."
An appreciative laugh sprang into Dick's eyes. Then he glanced at the girl-face in the shadow of his hand. And then he jerked the stove door open; crumpled the sheet, and thrust it in.
"Respect may not mean love in your language, Heinmann," he said dryly. "But love means respect, and I'll trouble you to remember that."
And yet, when they were gone, and when Kennedy had toiled with his armful of derelicts up to bed, Dick sat with his arms on the table, and laughed a low laugh with no mirth in it.
"How very easy it is to humbug others," he said. "What a pity it is not so easy to humbug oneself."
The ring of alert feet came down the passage, and Tempest thrust open the door.
"Ah! You've got it warmer in here," he said. "I'm frozen stiff as boards."
He jerked off his gloves and rubbed his hands before the stove, laughing cheerfully. He brought a changed atmosphere into the room which Dick's thoughts had made sordid; an atmosphere pure almost to austerity, yet gay and quick and eager, and a deep light shone in his eyes which was strange to Dick in its content. For Tempest had been over to the English Mission, and there he had seen Andree for five minutes that it tingled his blood to remember.
"How's Blake?" he asked. "Did you get him to do any work to-day?"
"Well, I did," Dick smiled blandly. "He intimated that he was too crippled with rheumatism. So I stretched him and rubbed him until I fancy he understands me a little better. He chopped half-a-cord of wood after that, and was willing to do more if I'd ordered it."
Tempest looked at him with puckered brows.
"There are ways of doing things" he suggested.
