would have done;
I mean at the beginning."

"No--no. I'm afraid I can't say that."

He did not expect anything but sincerity from her, neither did he
desire that her sense of honour should be less fine than his. But he
longed for some word of absolution, some look even that should
reinstate him in his self-esteem; and it seemed to him that there was
none.

"You can't think worse of me than I think myself," he said, and
turned mournfully away.

She sat suddenly upright, with one hand on the arm of her chair, as if
ready to rise and cut off his retreat.

"Wait," she said. "Have you any idea what you are going to do?"

The question held him within a foot's length of her chair, where the
light fell full on his face.

"I only know I'm not going back to the shop."

"You were in earnest, then? It really has come to that?"

"It couldn't very well come to anything else."

She looked up at him gravely, realizing for the first time, through
her own sorrow, the precise nature and the consequences of his action.
He had burnt his ships, parted with his means of livelihood, in a
Quixotic endeavour to serve her interests, and redeem his own honour.

"Forgive my asking, but for the present this leaves you stranded?"

"It leaves me free."

She rose. "I know what that means. You won't mind my paying my debts
at once, instead of later?"

He stared stupidly, as if her words had stunned him. She was seated at
her writing table, and had begun filling in a cheque before he
completely grasped the horrible significance of what she had said.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm writing thirty instead of fifteen, because that is what you ought
to have asked for in the beginning. You see I am more business-like
now than I was then."

He smiled.

"And do you really suppose I am going to take it?"

He meant his smile to be bitter, but somehow it was not. After all,
she was so helpless and so young.

"Of course you are going to take it."

"I needn't ask what you think of me."

This time the smile was bitterness itself.

"But it's yours--what I owe you. I'm only paying it to-day instead of
some other day."

"But you have not got to pay me anything. What do you think you're
paying me for?"

"For your work, for the catalogue, of course."

"That infamous catalogue ought never to have been made--not by me at
any rate."

"But you made it. You made it for me. I ordered it."

"You ordered it from my father. In ordinar