Her Faithful Knight — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

24 A Moonlight Walk. “You will never be that if—if you try to talk sentiment with me.” “Have I been very sentimental yet?” They stood facing each other in the broad pathway. She had thrown back her veil, and in the clear moonlight her face looked fairer and purer than ever. But she blushed under his long look and began to walk on faster than before. “Can we not be real friends?” she said, impulsively. “T mean friends without any silliness or sentiment.” “You mean platonic ” he began, but she cut him short, shaking her head impatiently. ~ “No, no! The word platonic always suggests spins- ters of fifty, ladylike curates, or something stolid and Ger- man. But now and then I find myself wishing I had a real man friend, to whom I could go for advice, and who would give it me, forgetting that I was a girl at all.” “You wouldn’t like it a bit, Miss Knight,” he said, de- cisively. ‘‘No woman respects a man for being indiffer- ent to her. “And your proposed friend would certainly have to be an octogenarian and blind to adopt such an attitude toward you.” : “Friendship, real friendship, I mean, between a young man and a young woman is, in your opinion then, 1m- possible?” she said, curling her mouth disdainfully. “When the woman is you, and the man loves her— yes.” He spoke very low, but she heard him perfectly. She caught her breath for a moment. She was in part sur- prised, in part annoyed, and yet secretly a little pleased. He was so big and protective looking, and went so straight to the point, this last quality being the surest to excite a woman’s approbation in a wooer. With all her demureness, coquetry was latent within her, for she looked up quite simply and said in unmoved tones: EOmicbdoo cS) (S@)