"You do too much, Dexter; you really do. I know how wonderfully young you are for your age, but still--." She broke off, dimly perceiving that, in spite of the flattering exordium, this allusion to his age was not quite welcome.
"Nothing to do with age," he growled. "Everybody who does anything at all does too much." (Did he mean to imply that she did nothing?)
"The nervous strain--" she began, once more wondering if this were not the moment to slip in a word of Alvah Loft. But though Manford had wished to be with her he had apparently no desire to listen to her. It was all her own fault, she felt. If only she had known how to reveal the secret tremors that were rippling through her! There were women not half as clever and tactful--not younger, either, nor even as good-looking--who would
