Thus spoke Waldron.  But all the time his soul lay hot within him, at having so to humble himself before Flint; at being thus obliged to eat crow, and fawn and feign and creep.

“If I didn’t need your billion, old man,” his secret thought was, as he eyed Flint with pretended humility, “you might go to Hell, for all of me—­you and your daughter with you, damn you both!”

The Billionaire sat blinking, for a moment.  Then, picking up a pencil and idly scrawling pothooks on the big clean sheet of blotting-paper that covered his reference-book table, beside which the men were sitting, he asked: 

“Well, what’s the trouble all about?  What are the facts?  I must have those, in full, before I can guarantee to do anything toward changing my daughter’s opinion.  Much as I deplore her action, Wally, I don’t know whether she’s right or wrong, till you tell me.  Now, let’s have it.”

“I will,” the other answered; and he was as good as his word.  Realizing the prime futility of any subterfuge, or any misstatement of fact—­which Catherine would surely discover and tell her father, and which would react against him—­Waldron began at the beginning and narrated the entire affair, with every detail precisely accurate.  Nay, he even exaggerated the offensiveness of his conduct, at the Longmeadow Club, and in various ways gave the Billionaire to understand that he was a more serious offender than in truth he really was.  For, after all, the only real offense was the lack of any compatibility between the girl and himself—­the total absence of love.

Flint listened carefully and with a judicial expression.  If he blamed Waldron, he made no statement of that fact.  A man himself, and one who viewed man’s weaknesses and woman’s foibles with a cynic eye, he could judge motives and weigh actions with considerable skill.

“I see, I see,” he commented, when Waldron had quite done, and had poured forth a highly false declaration of his great love for the girl and his determination that this rupture should not be permanent.  “I understand the case, I think.  It all seems an unfortunate accident—­just one of those unavoidable incidents which strike into and upset human calculations, against all expectation.

“You’re not terribly guilty, Waldron.  You acted inconsiderably.  Irritatingly, perhaps, and not wholly like a gentleman—­for which, blame the rotten Scotch they will persist in selling, out there at Longmeadow.  But even that’s not fatal.  Many men have done worse and been forgiven.  I’ll have a talk with Catherine, inside a day or two, when the psychological moment offers.  And you may be sure, if a father’s advice and good offices are of any avail, this little quarrel will be all patched up between you two.  Surely will be!  I can almost positively promise you that!”

“Promise it?” asked Waldron, leaning eagerly forward, a strange light in those close-set, greenish eyes.