“I don’t see it in that light at all.”

“The other David Kent would have seen it.  He would have said:  These men are public criminals.  If I can not bring them to justice, I can at least expose them to the scorn of all good men.  Therefore I have no right to bargain with them.”

Kent was silent for a long time.  When he spoke it was to say: 

“Why have you done this, Elinor?”

“Because I had to, David.  Could I do less?”

“I suppose not.  It’s in the blood—­in your blood and mine.  Other folk call it the Puritan virus of over-righteousness, and scoff at it.  I don’t know:  sometimes I think they have the best of the argument.”

“I can’t believe you are quite sincere when you say that,” she asserted.

“Yes, I am.  One can not compromise with conscience; that says itself.  But I have come to believe latterly that one’s conscience may be morbidly acute, or even diseased.  I’ll admit I’ve been taking treatment.”

“That sounds very dreadful,” she rejoined.

“It does, doesn’t it?  Yet it had to be done.  As I intimated a few minutes ago, my life has hitherto been a sort of unostentatious failure.  I used to think it was because I was outclassed:  I know now it has been because I wouldn’t do as other men do.  It has been a rather heart-breaking process—­to sort out the scruples, admitting the just and overriding the others—­but I have been given to see that it is the price of success.”

“I want you to succeed,” she said.

“Pardon me; I don’t think you do.  You have reopened the door to doubt, and if I admit the doubt I shall fail.”

The sonata Penelope was playing was approaching its finale, and Elinor was suddenly shaken with a trembling fit of fear—­the fear of consequences which might involve this man’s entire future.  She knew Kent was leaning on her, and she saw herself as one who has ruthlessly thrust an iron bar among the wheels of a delicate mechanism.  Who was she to be his conscience-keeper—­to stand in the way and bid him go back?  Were her own motives always so exalted?  Had she not once deliberately debated this same question of expediency, to the utter abasement of her own ideals?

Penelope had left the piano, and Loring was looking at his watch.  Kent saw them through the open window and got upon his feet.

“Grantham is saying he had no idea it was so late,” he hazarded.  “If I thank you for what you have said I am afraid it must be as the patient thanks the surgeon for the knife-stroke which leaves him a cripple for life.”

It was the one word needed to break her resolution.

“Oh, forget it; please forget it!” she said.  “I had no right....  You are doing a man’s work in the world, and it must be done in a man’s way.  If I can not help, you must not let me hinder.  If you let anything I have said discourage you, I shall never cease regretting it.”

His smile was a mere indrawing of the lips.