UPON A CARPET
it. He knew he had questioned, listened to her replies, not contradicted, perhaps; though he could not remember he had agreed with her. His diplomacy had been aimed at not startling her out of her self-revelation; and then she had turned on him and transfixed him with her judgment. "You are different." Where had she got that idea—confound her!
"I don't like the way you seemed not to tell her anything," Rader said, a little wistfully. "You are very clever at it, my boy."
"Mr. Rader, if you like, you know you can tell her everything."
The color flamed under the scholar's thin skin. "You need have no fear of that. All I want is to keep completely out of this business. I have had nothing to do with it and I don't want to have."
It was on the tip of Carron's rather angry tongue to say that the scholar had had everything to do with it, whether he had intended to or not; but he shut his teeth in front of the unruly member. "I beg your pardon, I have been boring you with my affairs."
"Not a bit," the other protested hastily. "In fact, I've been very much interested—" He broke off, conscious, evidently, of an inconsistency between this remark and the one before it. "That story you
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