ng to think. Whereas I haven't been thinking about
anything but her--I've been studying her straight on end for ten months
and I've found out a little bit about her. At any rate, I jolly well know
what she wants and I jolly well know how to give it her.

"You see, I was determined to get her, and I left no stone unturned. I
took trouble."

I suggested that _I_'d taken trouble enough in all conscience. He
laughed.

"_You_ only took trouble to get her away, old man, when she wanted to be
here with me. What do you suppose I brought her here for? Would _you_
have ever thought of letting her come with you? Of giving her what she
wanted to that extent? Not you! You'd only have thought of shutting her
up and protecting her for your own wretched sake--which was the last
thing she wanted. She'd had about enough of that."

I replied that certainly I should have thought of protecting a young girl
before everything else; that it never would have occurred to me to
compromise her in order to marry her--even if I did find I couldn't marry
her in any other way.

I had hit him there. He was quiet for a little while after it. I didn't
look at him--I didn't want to look at him--but I could feel him there,
breathing hard from the shock of it, with his mouth a little open.

Presently he took the thing up again. He went on, placably, quietly
explaining. "I thought of protecting her too. Only I wasn't such an idiot
as to think of it before everything else."

"No. You were clever enough to think of it afterwards--when you'd got
what you wanted. When you had compromised her."

"I suppose you mean there was only one thing I wanted? There, Furnival,
you lie."

I said I only meant that she _was_ compromised. At any rate, that was
what it looked like to her people and to everybody to whom it mattered.

"If you will persist in taking the ugliest view of it, of course it'll
look like that. I can't help how it looks to a set of old ladies and
clergymen in Canterbury. Come to that, it matters a damned sight more to
_me_ than it can to any of you people."

I said he wouldn't say so if he knew how he had made them suffer.

He laughed out at that.

"Suffer? They haven't suffered a quarter as much as I have. Not a
hundredth part as much. They've suffered thinking of themselves--of their
precious respectability. I've suffered thinking of _her_.

"Suffer? I've been through all _that_. It wasn't right, Furnival, it
wasn't right for anybody to