this time of day, to "fetch" a considerable sum, and the dear
lady might be pardoned if she were incidentally looking to them as a
means of subsistence. They were evidently what she had had up her
sleeve. Her delicacy left the financial side of the question almost
untouched; but in our brief discussion of the details, from her
little wistful tone in suggesting that if Mr. Burton could undertake
it at once and get it done soon, if they could in fact launch it on
the top of the returning tide--from the very way that she left me to
finish her phrases for her I gathered that they regarded the "Life
and Letters" as Wrackham's justification in more ways than one. They
proved that he had not left them unprovided for.

Well, I sounded Burton. He stared at me aghast. I was relieved to
find that he was not going to be sentimental about it. He refused
flatly.

"I can't do him _and_ Lankester," he said.

I saw his point. He would have to keep himself clean for _him_. I
said of course he couldn't, but I didn't know how he was going to
make it straight with Antigone.

"I shan't have to make it straight with Antigone," he said. "She'll
see it. She always has seen."

V

That was just exactly what I doubted.

I was wrong. She always had seen. And it was because she saw and
loathed herself for seeing that she insisted on Burton's doing this
thing. It was part of her expiation, her devotion, her long
sacrificial act. She was dragging Burton into it partly, I believe,
because he had seen too, more clearly, more profanely, more terribly
than she.

Oh, and there was more in it than that. I got it all from Burton. He
had been immensely plucky about it. He didn't leave it to me to get
him out of it. He had gone to her himself, so certain was he that he
could make it straight with her.

And he hadn't made it straight at all. It had been more awful, he
said, than I could imagine. She hadn't seen his point. She had
refused to see it, absolutely (I had been right there, anyhow).

He had said, in order to be decent, that he was too busy; he was
pledged to Lankester and couldn't possibly do the two together. And
she had seen all that. She said of course it was a pity that he
couldn't do it now, while people were ready for her father, willing,
she said, to listen; but if it couldn't be done at once, why, it
couldn't. After all, they could afford to wait. _He_, she said
superbly, could afford it. She ignored in her fine manner the
mat