s able to get along without it. But the
event seemed to show that if he had let things alone, Rupert Ashley
would have come and taken the burden on himself. As he was apparently
able to shoulder it, it would have been better to let him do it. In that
case he, Peter Davenant, would not have found himself in a position from
which he could not withdraw, while it was a humiliation to be dislodged
from it.

But, on the other hand, he would have missed his most wonderful
experience. There was that side to it, too. He would not have had these
moments face to face with Olivia Guion which were to be as food for his
sustenance all the rest of his life. During these days of discussion, of
argument, of conflict between his will and hers, he had the entirely
conscious sense that he was laying up the treasure on which his heart
would live as long as it continued to beat. The fact that she found
intercourse with him more or less distasteful became a secondary matter.
To be in her presence was the thing essential, whatever the grounds on
which he was admitted there. In this way he could store up her looks,
her words, her gestures, against the time when the memory of them would
be all he should have. As for her proposals of friendship made to him
that day--her suggestions of visits to be paid to Ashley and herself,
with introductions to a greater world--he swept them aside. He quite
understood that she was offering him the two mites that make a farthing
out of the penury of her resources, and, while he was touched by the
attempt to pay him, he didn't want them.

He had said, and said again, that he didn't want anything at all.
Neither did he. It would have been enough for him to go on as he was
going now--to fetch and carry, to meet lawyers and pacify creditors, to
protect her father because he _was_ her father, and get a glimpse of her
or a word from her when he came on his errands to Tory Hill. There were
analogies between his devotion and the adoration of a mortal for a
goddess beyond the stars. Like Hippolytus, he would have been content
that his Artemis should never step down from her shrine so long as he
was permitted to lay his gifts on her altar.

At least, he had felt so till to-day. He had begun the adventure in the
strength of the desire born of his visit to the scene of his father's
work at Hankow to do a little good. True, it was an impulse of which he
was more than half ashamed. Its mere formulation in words rendered it