“I haven’t shifted mine.”

“Not as you understand it yourself—­as, possibly, you’ve understood it all along.  But you have, as I see things.  When you came to me—­to my office——­”

She put up her hand as though she would have screened her face, but controlled herself to listen quietly.

“Your object, then,” Conquest continued, cruelly, “was to get Ford off, so that he might marry Evie.  Now, I understand it to be simply—­to get him off.”

She looked at him with eyes full of distress or protest.  It was a minute or two before she spoke.

“I don’t see the necessity for such close definition.”

“I do.  I want you to know exactly what you’re doing.  I want you to see that you’re paying a higher price than you need pay—­for the services rendered.”

He had got her now just where he had been trying to put her.  He had snared her, or given her an opportunity, according as she chose to take it.  She could have availed herself of the latter by a look or a simple intonation, for the craving of his heart was such that his perceptions were acute for the slightest hint.  Had she known that, it would have been easy for her to respond to him, playing her part with the loyalty with which she had begun it.  As it was, his cold manner and his slightly mocking tone betrayed her.  Her answer was meant to give him the kind of assurance she thought he was looking for; and she couched it in the language she supposed he would most easily understand.  In the things it said and did not say her very sincerity was what stabbed him.

“I hope it won’t be necessary to bring this subject up again.  I know what I undertook, and I’m anxious to fulfil it.  I should be very much hurt if I wasn’t allowed to, just because you had scruples about taking me at my word.  You’ve been so—­so splendid—­in doing your part that I should feel humiliated if I didn’t do mine.”

There was earnestness in her regard and a suggestion of haughtiness in the tilt of her head.  The Wise Man within him bade him be content, and this time he listened to the voice.  He did her the justice to remember, too, that she was offering him all he had ever asked of her; and if he was dissatisfied, it was because he had increased his demands without telling her.

It was by a transition of topic that he saw he could nail her to her purpose.

“By-the-way,” he said, when they had got on neutral ground again, and were speaking of Wayne, “I wish you would come and see what I think of doing for him.  There are two rooms back of my library—­too dark for my use—­but that wouldn’t matter to him, poor fellow—­”