There were tears in his eyes.  He brushed them angrily away.  “Oh, I know I ought to be ashamed of myself,” he said.  “It wasn’t her fault.  She wasn’t to know that a hot-blooded young chap of twenty hasn’t all his wits about him, any more than I was.  If I had never met you, it wouldn’t have mattered.  I’d have done my bit of good, and have stopped there, content.  With you beside me”—­he looked away from her to where the silent city peeped through its veil of night—­“I might have left the world better than I found it.”

The blood had mounted to her face.  She drew back into the shadow, beyond the tiny sphere of light made by the little lamp.

“Men have accomplished great things without a woman’s help,” she said.

“Some men,” he answered.  “Artists and poets.  They have the woman within them.  Men like myself—­the mere fighter:  we are incomplete in ourselves.  Male and female created He them.  We are lost without our mate.”

He was thinking only of himself.  Had he no pity for her.  So was she, also, useless without her mate.  Neither was she of those, here and there, who can stand alone.  Her task was that of the eternal woman:  to make a home:  to cleanse the world of sin and sorrow, make it a kinder dwelling-place for the children that should come.  This man was her true helpmeet.  He would have been her weapon, her dear servant; and she could have rewarded him as none other ever could.  The lamplight fell upon his ruddy face, his strong white hands resting on the flimsy table.  He belonged to an older order than her own.  That suggestion about him of something primitive, of something not yet altogether tamed.  She felt again that slight thrill of fear that so strangely excited her.  A mist seemed to be obscuring all things.  He seemed to be coming towards her.  Only by keeping her eyes fixed on his moveless hands, still resting on the table, could she convince herself that his arms were not closing about her, that she was not being drawn nearer and nearer to him, powerless to resist.

Suddenly, out of the mist, she heard voices.  The waiter was standing beside him with the bill.  She reached out her hand and took it.  The usual few mistakes had occurred.  She explained them, good temperedly, and the waiter, with profuse apologies, went back to have it corrected.

He turned to her as the man went.  “Try and forgive me,” he said in a low voice.  “It all came tumbling out before I thought what I was saying.”

The blood was flowing back into her veins.  “Oh, it wasn’t your fault,” she answered.  “We must make the best we can of it.”

He bent forward so that he could see into her eyes.

“Tell me,” he said.  There was a note of fierce exultation in his voice.  “I’ll promise never to speak of it again.  If I had been a free man, could I have won you?”

She had risen while he was speaking.  She moved to him and laid her hands upon his shoulders.