Up to the present his unanalytical mind would have replied—­as it would have replied to the same query concerning any one else—­that she was marrying him “because she wanted to.”  That would have seemed to him to cover the whole ground of any one’s affairs; but all at once it had become insufficient.  It was as if the street had suddenly become insufficient as a highway, breaking into a chasm.  He stopped abruptly, confronting, as it were, that bewildering void which a psychological situation invariably seemed to him.  To get into a place where his few straightforward formulA| did not apply gave him that sense of distress which every creature feels out of its native element.

It was a proof of the dependence with which, in matters requiring mental or emotional experience, he had come to lean on Miriam Strange, as well as of the directness with which he appealed to her for help, that he should face about on the instant, and turn his steps toward her.

* * * * *

Only a few minutes earlier she had seen Conquest go, and in the interval since his departure she had had time to detect the windings of his strategy, and to be content with the skill with which she had met them.  She understood him thoroughly, both in his fear of letting her go and his shame at holding her.  Standing in her wide bay-window, her slight figure erect, her hands behind her back, she looked down, without seeing it, on the spangled city, as angels intent on their own high thoughts might pass over the Milky Way.  She smiled faintly to herself, thinking how she should lead this kindly man, who for her sake had done so much for Norrie Ford, back to a sense of security and self-respect.  When Norrie Ford went free she meant to live for nothing else but the happiness of the man who had cleared his name and given him back to the world.  It would be a kind of consecration to her, like that of the nun who forsakes the dearest ties for a life of good works and prayer.  Conquest had told her that she was paying a bigger price than she needed to pay for the services rendered, but that depended somewhat on the value one set on the services.  In this case she would not have been content in paying less.  To do so would seem to indicate that she was not grateful.  Since perceiving his compunction as to claiming his reward, she was aware of an elation, an exaltation, in forcing it upon him.

She was in the glow of this sentiment when Ford was ushered in.  He was so vitally in her thoughts that, though she did not expect him, his presence gave her no surprise.  It helped her, in fact, to sustain the romantic quality in her mood to treat his coming as a matter of course, and make it a natural incident to the moment.

“Come and look down on the stars,” she said, in the tone she might have used to another member of her household who had appeared accidentally.  “The view here, in the evening, makes one feel as if one had been wafted above the sky.”