She grew white, and a timid, terrified look came into her eyes.

He touched her shoulder—­gently.  “Don’t—­please!” he said quietly.  “In all the years we’ve known each other, have you ever seen anything in me to make you feel—­like—­that?”

Her head drooped still lower, and her face became crimson.

“Adelaide, look at me!”

She lifted her eyes until they met his uncertainly.

He put out his hand.  “We are friends, aren’t we?”

She instantly laid her hand in his.

“Friends,” he repeated.  “Let us hold fast to that—­and let the rest take care of itself.”

“I’m ashamed of myself,” said she.  And in her swift revulsion of feeling there was again opportunity for him.  But he was not in the mood to see it.

“You certainly ought to be,” replied he, with his frank smile that was so full of the suggestions of health and sanity and good humor.  “You’ll never get a martyr’s crown at my expense.”

At New York he rearranged their steamer accommodations.  It was no longer diffidence and misplaced consideration that moved him permanently to establish the most difficult of barriers between them; it was pride now, for in her first stormy, moments in the train he had seen farther into her thoughts than he dared let himself realize.

CHAPTER XVII

POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE

The day after the wedding, as Arthur was going home from work, he saw Ross on the lofty seat of a dogcart, driving toward him along lower Monroe Street.  His anger instantly flamed and flared; he crushed an oath between his teeth and glanced about for some way to avoid the humiliating meeting.  But there was no cross street between him and the on-coming cart.  Pride, or vanity, came to his support, as soon as he was convinced that escape was impossible.  With an air that was too near to defiance to create the intended impression of indifference, he swung along and, just as the cart was passing, glanced at his high-enthroned former friend.

Ross had not seen him until their eyes met.  He drew his horse in so sharply that it reared and pawed in amazement and indignation at the bit’s coarse insult to thoroughbred instincts for courteous treatment.  He knew Arthur was at work in the factory; but he did not expect to see him in workman’s dress, with a dinner pail in his hand.  And from his height, he, clad in the carefully careless, ostentatiously unostentatious garments of the “perfect gentleman,” gazed speechless at the spectacle.  Arthur reddened violently.  Not all the daily contrasts thrust upon him in those months at the cooperage had so brought home to his soul the differences of caste.  And there came to him for the first time that hatred of inequalities which, repulsive though it is in theory, is yet the true nerver of the strong right arm of progress.  It is as characteristic of the homely,