There was a long silence.  Lucy sat staring before her.  Then suddenly she faced Montague.

“Allan!” she cried.  “Surely—­you understand!”

She burst out violently, “I had a right to sell that stock!  Ryder needed it.  He is going to organise a syndicate, and develop the property.  It was a simple matter of business.”

“I have no doubt of it, Lucy,” said Montague, in a low voice, “but how will you persuade the world of that?  I told you what would happen if you permitted yourself to be intimate with a man like Stanley Ryder.  You will find out too late what it means.  Certainly that incident with Waterman ought to have opened your eyes to what people are saying.”

Lucy gave a start, and gazed at him with horror in her eyes.  “Allan!” she panted.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Do you mean to tell me that happened to me because Stanley Ryder is my friend?”

“Of course I do,” said he.  “Waterman had heard the gossip, and he thought that if Ryder was a rich man, he was a ten-times-richer man.”

Montague could see the colour mount swiftly over Lucy’s throat and face.  She stood twisting her hands together nervously.  “Oh, Allan!” she said.  “That is monstrous!”

“It is not of my making.  It is the way the world is.  I found it out myself, and I tried to point it out to you.”

“But it is horrible!” she cried.  “I will not believe it.  I will not yield to such things.  I will not be coward enough to give up a friend for such a motive!”

“I know the feeling,” said Montague.  “I’d stand by you, if it were another man than Stanley Ryder.  But I know him better than you, I believe.”

“You don’t, Allan, you can’t!” she protested.  “I tell you he is a good man!  He is a man nobody understands—­”

Montague shrugged his shoulders.  “It is possible,” he said.  “I have heard that before.  Many men are better than the things they do in this world; at any rate, they like to persuade themselves that they are.  But you have no right to wreck your life out of pity for Ryder.  He has made his own reputation, and if he had any real care for you, he would not ask you to sacrifice yourself to it.”

“He did not ask me to,” said Lucy.  “What I have done, I have done of my own free will.  I believe in him, and I will not believe the horrible things that you tell me.”

“Very well,” said Montague, “then you will have to go your own way.”

He spoke calmly, though really his heart was wrung with grief.  He knew exactly the sort of conversation by which Stanley Ryder had brought Lucy to this state of mind.  He could have shattered the beautiful image of himself which Ryder had conjured up; but he could not bear to do it.  Perhaps it was an instinct which guided him—­he knew that Lucy was in love with the man, and that no facts that anyone could bring would make any difference to her.  All he could say was, “You will have to find out for yourself.”