as been found
out and flings up the game; it was a curiously tranquil and patient
candour, with something mysterious about it, as if she had knowledge that
I couldn't have, and bore with me through all my ignorance and
blundering. In fact, from beginning to end, except for the one moment
when I upset her by telling her about Reggie's sailing, she showed an
extraordinary tranquillity.

But as I couldn't understand her I simply said, "I wish you hadn't got
off."

She said in that same quiet way, "I had to."

"Because," I said, "he made you."

Since she had dragged Jevons in she should have him in. I wasn't going to
keep him out now to spare her. I had a right to know the truth. She had
shaken my conclusions. She had left me in a doubt more unbearable than
any certainty, and I considered that I had a right to know. I was
determined to know now and end it. That shows that I must have trusted
her; that I knew she wouldn't lie to me.

"But," she said, with the least perceptible surprise, "he didn't make
me."

"He told me he did."

"He told you?--What did he say exactly?"

"He said--if you must know--that he hadn't brought you, but that he had
made you come."

"He didn't. He didn't really. But supposing he had--what then?"

"You _want_ me to tell you what I think of it?"

"Yes."

"I think it was a beastly thing to make you do. He couldn't have done
it--you _know_ he couldn't have done it--if he hadn't been a bit of a
blackguard."

I was going to say, "as well as a bounder"; but I didn't want to rub that
in. I judged that when the poor child came to her senses her cup would be
full enough without my pouring.

"But, you see," she said, still peaceably, "he didn't do it. He only
_said_ he did. That was his niceness. He wanted to save me."

"My dear child, if it's saving you to bring you out here without your
people knowing anything about it, and to let you be seen with him
everywhere--"

"He didn't bring me. He said he wished I could come with him. And I said
I wished I could. I almost asked him to take me; and he said he couldn't.
Then he went off by himself. He was all right till he got to Bruges. Then
he wrote and said that the beauty of it hurt him, that it was awful being
here without me, and that he was coming back at the end of the week
without seeing any more of it, because he couldn't bear to know what I
was missing. He was going to keep the other places till we could see them
together. So I wired