Banks, naturally, misinterpreted my embarrassment.

“I suppose it would put you in the wrong, as it were—­up at the Hall,” he said.  “Coming to us after that row, I mean, ’d look as if what they’d been saying was all true.”

“I don’t care a hang about that,” I said earnestly.  In my relief at being able to speak candidly I forgot that I was committing myself to an explanation; and Banks inevitably wandered into still more shameful misconceptions of my implied refusal.

“Only a farm, of course...” he began.

“Oh! my dear chap,” I interposed quickly.  “Do believe me, I’d far sooner stay at the Home Farm than at Jervaise Hall.”

He looked at me with rather a blank stare of inquiry.

“Well, then?” was all he found to say.

I could think of nothing whatever.

For a second or two we stared at one another like antagonists searching for an unexposed weakness.  He was the first to try another opening.

“Fact is, I suppose,” he said tentatively, “that you’d like to be out of this affair altogether?  Had enough of it, no doubt?”

I might have accepted that suggestion without hurting Banks’s self-respect.  I saw the excuse as a possibility that provided an honourable way of escape.  I had but to say, “Well, in a way, yes.  I have, in all innocence, got most confoundedly entangled in an affair that hasn’t anything whatever to do with me, and it seems that the best thing I can do now is to clear out.”  He would have believed that.  He would have seen the justice of it.  But the moment this easy way of escape was made clear to me, I knew that I did not want to take it; that in spite of everything, I wanted, almost passionately, to go to the Home Farm.

I was aware of a sudden clarity of vision.  The choice that lay before me appeared suddenly vital; a climax in my career, a symbol of the essential choice that would determine my future.

On the one hand was the security of refusal.  I could return, unaffected, to my familiar life.  Presently, when the Jervaise nerves had become normal again, the Jervaises themselves would recognise the egregious blunder they had made in their treatment of me.  They would apologise—­through Frank.  And I should go on, as I had begun.  I was already decently successful.  I should become more successful.  I could look forward to increased financial security, to a measure of fame, to all that is said to make life worth living.  And as I saw it, then, the whole prospect of that easy future, appeared to me as hopelessly boring, worthless, futile.

On the other hand...?  I had no idea what awaited me on the other hand.  I could see that I should have to accept the stigma that had been put upon me; that I should be thrown into the company of a young woman whose personality had extraordinarily attracted me, who probably detested me, and who might now be engaged to a man I very actively disliked; that I should involve myself in an affair that had not fully engaged my sympathy (I still retained my feeling of compassion for old Jervaise); that I should, in short, be choosing the path of greatest resistance and unpleasantness, with no possibility of getting any return other than scorn and disgrace.