Margaret turned on him almost fiercely.

‘Why do you tell me all this?’ she asked.  ’For heaven’s sake let poor Miss Bamberger rest in her grave!’

‘Since you ask me why,’ answered Mr. Van Torp, unmoved,’ I tell you all this because I want you to know more about me than you do.  If you did, you’d hate me less.  That’s the plain truth.  You know very well that there’s nobody like you, and that if I’d judged I had the slightest chance of getting you I would no more have thought of marrying Miss Bamberger than of throwing a million dollars into the sea after that book, or ten million, and that’s a great deal of money.’

‘I ought to be flattered,’ said Margaret with scorn, still facing the wind.

’No.  I’m not given to flattery, and money means something real to me, because I’ve fought for it, and got it.  Your regular young lover will always call you his precious treasure, and I don’t see much difference between a precious treasure and several million dollars.  I’m logical, you see.  I tell you I’m logical, that’s all.’

’I daresay.  I think we have been talking here long enough.  Shall we go back?’

She had got her anger under again.  She detested Mr. Van Torp, but she was honest enough to realise that for the present she had resented his saying that Lushington’s book was probably trash, much more than what he had told her of his broken engagement.  She turned and came back to the ventilator, meaning to go around to her chair, but he stopped her.

‘Don’t go yet, please!’ he said, keeping beside her.  ’Call me a disgusting brute if you like.  I sha’n’t mind it, and I daresay it’s true in a kind of way.  Business isn’t very refining, you know, and it was the only education I got after I was sixteen.  I’m sorry I called that book rubbish, for I’m sure it’s not.  I’ve met Mr. Lushington in England several times; he’s very clever, and he’s got a first-rate position.  But you see I didn’t like your refusing the book, after I’d taken so much trouble to get it for you.  Perhaps if I hadn’t thrown it overboard you’d take it, now that I’ve apologised.  Would you?’

His tone had changed at last, as she had known it to change before in the course of an acquaintance that had lasted more than a year.  He put the question almost humbly.

‘I don’t know,’ Margaret answered, relenting a little in spite of herself.  ‘At all events I’m sorry I was so rude.  I lost my temper.’

‘It was very natural,’ said Mr. Van Torp meekly, but not looking at her, ’and I know I deserved it.  You really would let me give you the book now, if it were possible, wouldn’t you?’

‘Perhaps.’  She thought that as there was no such possibility it was safe to say as much as that.

‘I should feel so much better if you would,’ he answered.  ’I should feel as if you’d accepted my apology.  Won’t you say it, Madame Cordova?’

‘Well—­yes—­since you wish it so much,’ Margaret replied, feeling that she risked nothing.