“Then I shall let him worry through it himself.  I’ve got other things to think about.”

When she had given him his tea and begun to sip her own, she looked up with that particular bright smile which in women means the bracing of the courage.

“It’ll be all right,” she said, with forced conviction.  “I know it will.  It’s foolish in me to think I shall miss her, when she will be so near.  It’s only because she and Mr. Wayne are all I’ve got—­”

“They needn’t be,” he interposed, draining his cup, and setting it down, like a man preparing for action.

She knew her own words had exposed her to this, and was vexed with herself for speaking in a dangerous situation without due foresight.  For a minute she could think of nothing to say that would ward off his thrust.  She sat looking at him rather helplessly, unconsciously appealing to him with her eyes to let the subject drop.

If he meant to go on with it, he took his time—­flecking a few crumbs from his white waistcoat and from his fingertips.  In the action he showed himself for what he was—­a man so neat as just to escape being dapper.  There was nothing large about him, in either mind or body; while, on the contrary, there was much that was keen and able.  The incisiveness of the face would have been too sharp had it not been saved by the high-bred effect of a Roman nose and a handsome mouth and chin.  The fair mustache, faded now rather than gray, softened the cynicism of the lips without concealing it.  It was the face of a man accustomed to “see through” other men—­to “see through” life—­compelling its favors from the world rather than asking them.  The detailed exactness and unobtrusive costliness of everything about him, from the pearl in his tie to the polish on his boots, were indicative of a will rigorously demanding “the best,” and taking it.  The refusal of it now in the person of the only woman whom he had ever wanted as a wife left him puzzled, slightly exasperated, as before a phenomenon not to be explained.  It was this unusual resistance that caused the somewhat impatient tone he took with her.

“It’s all nonsense—­your living as you do—­like a professional trained nurse.”

“The life of a professional trained nurse isn’t nonsense.”

“It is for you.”

“On the contrary; it’s for me, more than for almost any one, to justify my right to being in the world.”

“Oh, come now!  Don’t let us begin on that.”

“I don’t want to begin on it.  I’d much rather not.  But if you don’t, you throw away the key that explains everything about me.”

“All right,” he rejoined, in an argumentative tone.  “Let’s talk about it, then.  Let’s have it out.  You feel your position; granted.  Mind you, I’ve always said you wouldn’t have done so if it hadn’t been for Gertrude Wayne.  The world to-day has too much common sense to lay stress on a circumstance of that kind.  Believe me, nobody thinks about it but yourself.  Did Lady Bonchurch?  Did any of her friends?  You’ve got it a little bit—­just a little bit—­on the brain; and the fault isn’t yours; it belongs to the woman whose soul is gone, I hope, where it’s freed from the rules of a book of etiquette.”