You have been a considerable help to _me_."
"To _you_!" exclaimed Turner, surprised. "A help to _you_? Why, how do
you mean?"
"Well," he answered, still without looking at her, "one always has one's
influence, you know."
"Ah, lots of influence _I_ have over anybody," retorted Turner,
incredulously.
"Yes, you have," he insisted. "You have plenty of influence over the
people that care for you. You have plenty of influence over me."
Turner, very much embarrassed, and not knowing how to answer, bent down
to the side of the mantelpiece and turned up the flame of the gas-log a
little. Young Haight continued, almost as embarrassed as she:
"I suppose I'm a bad lot, perhaps a little worse than most others, but I
think--I hope--there's some good in me. I know all this sounds absurd
and affected, but _really_ I'm not posing; you won't mind if I speak
just as I think, for this once. I promise," he went on with a half
smile, "not to do it again. You know my mother died when I was little
and I have lived mostly with men. You have been to me what the society
of women has been to other fellows.
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