expect anything at
all."

"Then you leave me more in the dark than ever."

Davenant still eyed him pensively. "Do I understand you to be suspicious
of my motives?"

"Suspicious might not be the right word. Suppose we said curious."

Davenant reflected. Perhaps it was his mastery of the situation that
gave him unconsciously a rock-like air of nonchalance. When he spoke it
was with a little smile, which Guion took to be one of condescension.
Condescension in the circumstances was synonymous with insolence.

"Well, sir, suppose I allowed you to remain curious? What then?"

They were the wrong words. It was the wrong manner. Guion looked up with
a start. His next words were uttered in the blind instinct of the
haughty-headed gentleman who thinks highly of himself to save the
moment's dignity.

"In that case I think we must call the bargain off."

Davenant shot out of his seat. He, too, was not without a current of hot
blood.

"All right, sir. It's for you to decide. Only, I'm sorry. Good-by!" He
held out his hand, which Guion, who was now leaning forward, toying with
the pens and pencils on the desk, affected not to see. A certain lack of
ease that often came over Davenant at moments of leave-taking or
greeting kept him on the spot. "I hoped," he stammered, "that I might
have been of some use to you, and that Miss Guion--"

Guion looked up sharply. "Has _she_ got anything to do with it?"

"Nothing," Davenant said, quickly, "nothing whatever."

"I didn't see how she _could_ have--" Guion was going on, when Davenant
interrupted.

"She has nothing to do with it whatever," he repeated. "I was only going
to say that I hoped she might have got through her wedding without
hearing anything about--all this--all this fuss."

In uttering the last words he had moved toward the door. His hand was on
the knob and he was about to make some repetition of his farewells when
Guion spoke again. He was leaning once more over the desk, his fingers
playing nervously with the pens and pencils. He made no further effort
to keep up his role of keen-sighted man of business. His head was bent,
so that Davenant could scarcely see his face, and when he spoke his
words were muffled and sullen.

"Half a million would be too much. Four hundred and fifty thousand would
cover everything."

"That would be all the same to me," Davenant said, in a matter-of-fact
tone.

But he went back to the desk and took his seat again.

VI