le and laid her face upon them.
He sat still, overwhelmed with compunction. After a long interval, in
which he had painfully measured the seconds by her hard-drawn breathing,
she looked up at him with a face washed clear of bitterness.

"Don't suppose I don't know what you must have thought of me!"

The cry struck him down to a lower depth of self-abasement. "My poor
child," he felt like answering, "the shame of it is that I've never
thought of you at all!" But he could only uselessly repeat: "I'll do
anything I can to help you."

She sat silent, drumming the table with her hand. He saw that her doubt
of him was allayed, and the perception made him more ashamed, as if her
trust had first revealed to him how near he had come to not deserving
it. Suddenly she began to speak.

"You think, then, I've no right to marry him?"

"No right? God forbid! I only meant----"

"That you'd rather I didn't marry any friend of yours." She brought
it out deliberately, not as a question, but as a mere dispassionate
statement of fact.

Darrow in turn stood up and wandered away helplessly to the window. He
stood staring out through its small discoloured panes at the dim brown
distances; then he moved back to the table.

"I'll tell you exactly what I meant. You'll be wretched if you marry a
man you're not in love with."

He knew the risk of misapprehension that he ran, but he estimated his
chances of success as precisely in proportion to his peril. If certain
signs meant what he thought they did, he might yet--at what cost he
would not stop to think--make his past pay for his future.

The girl, at his words, had lifted her head with a movement of surprise.
Her eyes slowly reached his face and rested there in a gaze of deep
interrogation. He held the look for a moment; then his own eyes dropped
and he waited.

At length she began to speak. "You're mistaken--you're quite mistaken."

He waited a moment longer. "Mistaken----?"

"In thinking what you think. I'm as happy as if I deserved it!" she
suddenly proclaimed with a laugh.

She stood up and moved toward the door. "NOW are you satisfied?" she
asked, turning her vividest face to him from the threshold.

XXI

Down the avenue there came to them, with the opening of the door, the
voice of Owen's motor. It was the signal which had interrupted their
first talk, and again, instinctively, they drew apart at the sound.
Without a word Darrow turned back into the room, while