“No,” said Leam a little shortly.

She always stiffened when Alick spoke to her before folk with anything like intimacy in his manner.  He was her good friend, granted, and she liked him in a way and respected him in a way, though he was still too much after the pattern of her former slave and dog to gain her best esteem.  She was one of those women who are arbitrary and disdainful to masculine weakness, and require to be absolutely dominated by men if they are to respect them as men like to be respected by women, and as—­pace the Shriekers—­the true woman likes to respect men.  And Alick, though he had her in his hands and might destroy her at a word—­clergyman, too, as he was, and thus possessing the key to higher things than she knew—­was always so humble, so subservient, he made her feel as if she was his superior—­not, as it should have been, that he was hers.  In consequence, girl-like, proud and shy, she treated him with more disdain than she ought to have done, and used the power which he himself gave her without much consideration as to its effect.  Besides, she did not wish to let people think he knew too much of her.  With the nervous fancy of youth, ever believing itself to be transparent and understood all through, she imagined it would be seen that he had the right to speak to her familiarly—­that he had her in his hand to destroy her at a word if so minded.  Wherefore she said “No” shortly, and turned away her eyes as her protest against his glad face, crooked elbow and eager offer.

“I will not let you fall, and it is very jolly,” cried Alick cheerily, more like the boyish Alick of former days than the ascetic young curate of modern times.

“I do not like it,” said Leam.

Alick’s countenance fell; and when his face, always long, became longer still, with a congealed-looking skin, sad, red-lidded eyes and a hanging under lip, it was not lovely.  Indeed, according to the miserable fatality which so often makes the spiritually best the physically worst—­like the gods whom the Athenians enclosed in outer cases of satyrs and hideous masks of misshapen men—­Alick’s face was never lovely.  But his soul?  If that could have been seen, the old carved parable of the Greeks would have been justified.

“Nonsense, Leam!  Why cannot you do as others do?” cried Mr. Dundas.

He wanted to get rid of her for a while, and he was not unwilling that Alick, whose affection he suspected, should rid him of her for ever if he cared to saddle himself for life with such an uncomfortable companion.

“I do not like it,” repeated Leam.

“Nonsense!” said her father again.  “Other girls are on.  Why should you not join them?  I see Adelaide Birkett and the Fairbairns.  Why not go to them with Alick?”

“It looks silly balancing one’s self on the edge of a knife.  And I should fall,” said Leam.

“No, you shall not fall,” Alick pleaded.  “I will undertake that you shall not.”