bumptious and presumptuous. Beyond the confession made to Rodney Temple
on the night of his arrival no force could have induced him to avow it.
Better any imputation of craft than the suspicion of wanting to confer
benefits on his fellow-men. It was a satisfaction to him to be able to
say, even in his own inner consciousness, that the desperate state of
Guion's affairs forced his hand and compelled him to a quixotic course
which he would not otherwise have taken.

The first glimpse of Ashley brought this verbal shelter to the dust. So
long as the accepted lover had been but an abstract conception Davenant
had been able to think of him with toleration. But in presence of the
actual man the feeling of antagonism was instinctive, animal,
instantaneous. Though he pumped up his phrases of welcome to a
heartiness he did not feel, he was already saying to himself that his
brief day of romance was done. "He's going to squeeze me out." With this
alert and capable soldier on the spot, there would be no need for a
clumsy interloper any longer. They could do without him, and would be
glad to see him go.

The upshot of it all was that he must retire. It was not only the part
of tact, but a gentleman could do no less. Ashley had all the rights and
powers. The effort to withstand him would be worse than ineffectual, it
would be graceless. In Miss Guion's eyes it would be a blunder even more
unpardonable than that for which her punishment had been in some ways
the ruling factor in his life. He was sure she would not so punish him
again, but her disdain would not be needed. Merely to be _de trop_ in
her sight, merely to be troublesome, would be a chastisement from which
he should suffer all the stings of shame. If he was to go on serving her
with the disinterestedness of which, to himself at any rate, he had made
a boast, if he was to keep the kindly feeling she had perhaps begun to
entertain for him, he must resign his provisional authority into
Ashley's hands and efface himself.

To do that would be easy. He had only to advance by a few weeks his
departure for Stoughton, Michigan, where he meant to return in any case.
It was the familiar field of those opportunities in copper which he
hoped to profit by again. Once he was on that ground, Olivia Guion and
her concerns would be as much a part of a magic past as the woods and
mountains of a holiday are to a man nailed down at an office desk. With
a very little explanation to Ashley he